


for there is nothing lost

by coldhope



Series: all that you love will be carried away [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Evil Space Boyfriends, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-17 15:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5876530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of <i><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5741020/chapters/13229401">all that you love will be carried away</a></i>, Hux and Ren and the <i>Dark Heart</i> are sent on a series of missions by Supreme Leader Snoke, searching for ancient Jedi ruins and the information that might still remain within them to be discovered and unlocked. It is a far cry from the <i>Finalizer</i> and the Starkiller Base assignment, but Hux is developing philosophical distance, and in any case he is too busy to brood overmuch. </p>
<p>But the things they discover are far from simple, and not limited to ancient tumbledown temples on backwater planetoids--and in fact Hux and Ren learn rather more about each other than Snoke might have had in mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Theology had never been one of Hux's strong suits. 

His opinion of most organized religion was that it lacked sufficient organization, and relied entirely on that which could not be verified by any proper means to instill awe and fear in its adherents; mostly he thought its general benefit involved the creative scope of blasphemy. His father had been staunchly atheist, as was Hux mostly himself, but at some point in his early childhood he had been told by someone or other that there were hells to which bad people went after death, and that for some reason there were seventeen hot hells and seventeen cold hells, which struck him as excessive. He was pretty sure that Kellan IV had been located in one of the cold hells, probably near the bottom of the stack, and Jakku was probably at least a contender for a hot hell. But at no point had anybody mentioned the idea of a _wet_ hell, and this, Hux felt, was an oversight. 

They had been on the dwarf planet Felthor for--he checked his chrono--four hours now, and he was pretty sure he had never been this wet in his entire life, even when he'd been underwater. His uniform stuck horribly to him as he plodded after Ren through a dripping, violently green forest, following some nonexistent trail that only Force-sensitives could detect. Even Ren was having trouble now and then, having to stop and concentrate to refocus on whatever signal he was receiving.

They were here because Snoke’s spynet had been picking up repeated references around various parts of the galaxy to an old ruin somewhere in the middle of this horrible forest, a ruin which might have once upon a time been part of, or even all of, a Jedi temple. He hadn’t asked exactly what it was they were supposed to _find_ , in these ruins, even if they had at one point been used by the galaxy’s most obnoxiously virtuous bunch. Snoke had not vouchsafed details to him, and he was not about to make a nuisance of himself demanding clarification, not when they’d at least partly won their way back onto Snoke’s _useful_ radar with the information from Kellan IV. 

Jedi temples, Hux thought, ducking under yet another tree-branch draped with green and sticky fungus that wanted to get stuck in his hair. Jedi bloody Temples. What did anyone want with them, now that the Jedi were gone? Had they perhaps buried some sort of secret information at each site that would help to bring about a new Jedi Order if anything particularly nasty happened to the current version?

Hux wished he hadn’t just thought that, because it sounded unpleasantly feasible. If so, that meant this was not the only wretched little planetoid he and Ren would be sent to examine. Not even close to the only one. Snoke would want that hidden information. He would, if he were Snoke. He would want _all_ of the information.

He pushed his wet hair out of his face, stifling a cough, glad at least that their slow and ungraceful passage through the forest was noisy enough to provide camouflage. Hux couldn’t seem to make the rasping tickle in the back of his throat go away, and it wasn’t something he particularly wanted Ren to know about, any more than the aches that made him feel as if he were carrying dive weights on his wrists and ankles as they clambered and scrabbled through the dense undergrowth. 

It was reasonably warm, at least, but the sheer unpleasantness of being soaked to the skin with no prospect of drying out anytime soon made up for that small positive note. His officers had been passing a cold around for the past several days, and Hux had no doubt that it was now his turn. Over the past hour or so his chest had begun to feel uncomfortably tight, tight and _warm_ , and it wasn’t that particular flavor of heat that he instinctively associated with Kylo Ren, more the nasty spreading warmth of something that might actually require medical attention. 

Hux filed that away under the _not now_ heading, and pushed his hair out of his face again. They had been bushwhacking solidly for what must be...coming up on six hours, and there was no sign of the ruins. 

“Ren,” he said--or tried to say, catching halfway on a cough, which _hurt_ more than he’d expected. “Stop. Are you sure we’re headed in the right direction?”

Kylo Ren, who was apparently determined to spend all of his on-world adventures in full mask and hood and drapery, paused to look back at him. “It’s just,” Hux said. “We should probably have encountered some...indication of wreckage, by now.”

“We are. I can feel it,” Ren said through the mask. “There is something here. I’m not sure what, but there is _something_ strong with the Force.”

Hux shivered again, feeling rain crawl down under his collar. “Okay, then. Far be it from me to question your direction-finding capabilities. I just hope there’ll be somewhere to get out of this _bloody_ rain.” He had wanted to use a somewhat different adjective, but training at a base level had filtered that out. 

Ren was still staring at him. He’d been a little surprised to find that he could sort of tell when Ren was looking at him, whether or not the mask was actually pointed straight in his decision. It was a little like the sense he had of the troopers’ faces, past the helmet visage. “What?” Hux demanded. 

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “But I’d be finer if we got to someplace where it wasn’t raining quite so hard, if you take my meaning.”

His throat was beginning to feel as if somebody had taken sandpaper to it, and Hux was grateful when the continued downpour began to involve thunder muttering overhead, because it meant he didn’t have to worry so much about Ren hearing him cough. Definitely a cold, he thought, and perfect timing, he could not possibly have imagined a less convenient moment. 

Time passed. Hux was shivering now in long uncontrollable waves under the sodden uniform, and when Ren paused he nearly walked right into his back, catching himself only with an effort. “What is it?” he rasped. They were on the edge of a broad gap in the forest; an overgrown heap of stone stood some little distance away in the middle of the clearing. 

“It _was_ a temple,” Ren said, and then turned to stare at him. “You’re unwell.”

“It was a temple, so what? Is...are you going to find anything useful here, or did we just come this far to verify an intelligence claim?” Hux leaned on a tree, blinking through the rain. His chest hurt with a sort of hot, dark-red feeling. “Please for the sake of all space tell me we’re here for a _reason_.”

“We are,” said Ren. “There is power here. Power, and perhaps information.” He gestured to the tangled open space surrounding the ruins, half-subsumed with violent, virulent green overgrowth. “I have to go in there.”

“Into the...what, rubble?”

“There is something to find,” Ren said, and Hux had rarely felt quite so strongly that he wanted to take Ren by the shoulders and shake him until he started making sense. “Stay here,” Ren added. “It may not be safe, past this tree-line. The power is...unstable. Ancient.”

“You’re walking into the equivalent of an unstable, what, substation, and you want me to stay out here?” Hux said. “--On further thought, that’s not such a terrible idea.”

“You _are_ unwell,” said Ren. 

“I’ve got a cold. Go on. Go find your...whatever it is we’re here for.”

Ren’s mask stared at him for a little longer, unreadable even with Hux’s vague new skills, and then he turned and pushed through the cover at the edge of the clearing, heading for what Hux finally recognized as the ruins of a sort of ancient ziggurat, or step-pyramid, or something along those lines. It had not been easy to parse at first because some titanic force had, at some point in the past, apparently _cleaved the pyramid right down the middle_ , like a giant butcher’s knife slicing through stone and fill and substructure, and the two halves had sort of...collapsed, away from one another, into heaps of overgrown rubble. 

Ren was walking, quickly, with determination, into the riven space between the two mounds of ruin. Now that he was out of earshot, Hux leaned against a tree and let himself cough heavily, trying to get the stupid tickle to vacate the premises, but all it did was hurt, not in his throat but his chest--tight and difficult and _hot_. He held on to the tree until it finally passed, trying to get his breath back, trying to make out Ren’s form through the drifting grey veils of rain that passed through the open space between him and the ruins. 

Possibly if he had been at his best and brightest Hux would have seen the thing in time to prevent what happened next, but as it was he barely had time to react before disaster was upon them. Two disasters. First--Ren’s dark indistinct figure had almost vanished between the two halves of the temple ruins, but not quite vanished, not sufficiently indistinct that Hux could not see him clearly when something like a blue-white lightning bolt flared between the two heaps of stone, like a spark jumping a gap once sufficient voltage difference had built up, and...in its leap from one chunk of rubble to the other...passed _through_ Kylo Ren. 

Ren was held frozen for a horrible moment between the flaring arcs--not quite frozen, Hux could see, he was jittering and shaking helplessly as the current flowed through him--and then the light snapped off and silence and grey slow rain refilled the universe. 

Hux let go of his tree and floundered through the knee-high tangle of vines and bushes, falling several times, struggling to his feet again, coughing and gasping as he ran until he broke free of the jungle-growth and found himself in the force-corridor between the heaps of stone. 

He fell on his knees beside Ren, breathing much too hard, with a nasty creak in the sound, not caring. The last time he had seen this white closed face turned up to the sky had been on Starkiller, before the universe had changed. He bent to rest his head against Ren’s chest and slumped in relief as he heard the heartbeat.

Hux gathered Ren in his arms, shivering like a half-drowned dog, and thumbed his way through the comm unit’s emergency frequencies. Something about this place seemed to interfere with their signals, and he was not entirely surprised even as despair threatened to drown his reasoning. He did his best to transmit on the whistling, sighing crackle of their set comm frequency, and on all the emergency frequencies, and when he heard nothing in return but the hiss and crash of static simply returned the comm to its clip on his belt and looked around. 

Shelter. Ren needed shelter, badly, and so did he, and there was no guarantee that bolt of flaring blue-white energy wasn’t about to come _back_. Hux felt, instinctively, that if they got out of this corridor between the two sets of ruins they would be safe at least from that, from whatever ancient protective system Ren had triggered with his approach. He scanned the clearing through the grey curtains of rain. 

And stopped dead, frozen. Two eyes the size of his head, like round orange embers, had appeared at the edge of the forest where he and Ren had first entered the clearing.

Two...no. Three. _Four_. By all the hells Hux couldn’t make out _how_ many there were, the smaller eyes massing above and around the two he had first seen. A heavy dark form began to appear around the eyes as the thing moved forward into the clearing surrounding the ruin. Too many legs, Hux thought, getting up, putting himself between the thing and Kylo Ren. 

His chest was on fire but somehow everything had slowed down, as if he were watching the situation through glass-clear ice. So clear and so slow and so cold. He reached for the blaster on his hip, and even before he brought it up to aim into the center of one of those massive orange eyes somehow he knew it wouldn’t fire; something about this place, this rarefied atmosphere between these heaps of ruin, had jammed it as effectively as any unstable charge could have done. 

Hux stared as the thing lumbered toward them, everything still so clear and so slow and so cold, and turned his head in what felt like slow motion toward the dark crumpled form of Kylo Ren. They were going to die, he thought. They were going to die stupidly, on this wet hell of a dwarf planet, and no one would ever know what had become of them once they lay in that thing’s belly--and perhaps that thought was what finally unfroze Hux. He felt as if he himself were slowed down to the point of farce as he ran the few paces back to Ren, half-fell on his knees beside him, and took the cold cross-shaped hilt of the lightsaber from its mounting on Ren’s belt. 

It was heavy. Terribly heavy. He had not expected that, and Hux had to hold the thing in both hands, squeezing his fingers tight around it well below the crossvents at the base of the blade, as he struggled back to his feet. His breathing hurt, raw and thick and heavy; he could feel things moving in his chest. 

_We are going to die unless I can do this_ , he thought, staring at the creature--now almost upon them, a misbegotten nightmare of legs and eyes and tumescent lumps. 

_I can do this._

His thumb found the lightsaber’s activation switch and suddenly instead of holding a heavy ungainly object Hux was holding a heavy ungainly object with first one and then two more brilliant, humming, hissing-crackling red blades of light sprouting above his fists. He could feel the thing’s energy vibrating through the bones of his hands. It smelled like thunderstorms. All the little hairs on his arms stood up fiercely, helplessly, as if in the grip of a powerful electric charge. 

And the odd thing was it now had _balance_. Hux had trained with mock blades worlds ago, lifetimes ago, in the Academy: it was a gentleman’s game, nothing more than that, but they had trained, and he could remember the feeling of a sword’s balance in his hand. The weight of the blade and the weight of the hilt should come to a fulcrum-point based on the sword’s shape and length. For the practice sabers he’d played with in that previous world, the balance point had been just beyond the crossguard; you could hold the sword out steady on a couple of fingers, just there, and it would eventually level itself in equilibrium. Ren’s saber, for all its stupid dramatic effect, was _balanced_ , and Hux stood up properly and felt the center of its weight would rest just _at_ the crossguard, which helped, gave him a little more reach, a little more leverage. 

He swung the thing through the air and part of him could not help being excited at the sound it made as it moved--the hum stretched out, sound catching up with light. Hux put it through a couple of the passes his hands and arms and feet remembered better than his mind did, and then he walked out of the corridor between the halves of the dead Jedi Temple with Kylo Ren’s lightsaber held on guard. 

_We’re going to die_ , said part of his mind, and Hux felt his lips draw back in a nasty, a horrible grin. _Maybe_ , he thought. _But at least I got a chance to_ try _this_.

The thing towered over him. Still everything was very clear, almost too slow--and then it reared a tree-trunk leg back and brought it down in what was obviously meant to be a killing blow, and Hux swung Ren’s saber and felt only the slightest resistance as the red-humming blade bit all the way through, the severed portion of the leg rolling into the mud with a thick _splat_. 

There was a scream, deafening but still almost felt more than heard, and then everything seemed to happen at once, and Hux’s ability to think clearly retreated into the back of his mind as the part involved with surviving took over and swung, slashed, stabbed, parried, cut, _hacked_. The world had turned into a hell of glowing orange eyes and black blood and the red blade, the burning blade and its little side companion blades, which Hux had only just barely managed to avoid hurting himself with as he slashed and swung. Blood stank as it cooked off the blade with a brief sizzle. 

Then it was over, and he stood panting, coughing thickly, with the saber drooping from guard as he fought for breath; and it took him a long time to realize he could turn it off again. The creature was...not moving, and he thought probably if it was going to do much more it would do it slowly enough to give them warning. 

He stayed where he was, the dead hilt of the saber still in his hand, for what seemed like a very long time before finally dropping it into the mud and stumbling behind a handy boulder to be sick. When, eventually, he reemerged, Hux was relieved to see the hulk of the creature had not moved. 

The rain, which had either eased off during his fight with the thing or had ceased to register in his awareness, was coming back with a vengeance. Hux picked up the saber’s hilt and carefully hooked it to his own belt, coming back to kneel beside Ren. He was still apparently unconscious, and Hux was at once glad of it because Ren hadn’t been able to see how bloody terrible he was with a sword, and frustrated because damn everything, he _had_ been able to kill the thing and save both their lives. 

_That won’t--_ said a voice in his mind, and he pushed it away: not Ren’s, it was his own, the one he had come to think of as the Nag. _I know,_ he said, kneeling to get his arm under Ren’s shoulders and drag him more or less vertical, draped over Hux’s shoulder in an inelegant but functional carry. _I know. Won’t keep atmo in or vacuum out, whether or not he saw me. You want to be helpful, find us somewhere we can shelter, because he needs to get warmed up in a hurry._

Hux had given up, just recently, on worrying about the fact that he could hold arguments with himself inside his own head. There wasn’t much one could do about it, other than appeal to the psytechs, and Hux had a healthy desire not to spend the rest of his life somewhere with shatterproof windows. He put it down to a more than usually active imagination, and merely nodded to himself when the small voice suggested _there, just there, a little way away from the clearing, there’s a space where you could cut some wood and put up a lean-to and wait for morning._

~

Ren’s lightsaber was _much_ more efficient at chopping down trees than any hatchet Hux had ever used. In fact he was growing almost fond of the simple efficacy of the thing as he stripped off branches and notched them here and there to fit roughly into one another. It was still noisy and dangerous and unstable and unnecessarily dramatic, but it cut like anything and it didn’t make your wrists ache after half an hour of work the way a metal blade would have done. 

He turned the saber off, almost with regret, when he was done, and it surprised him a great deal when Kylo Ren--curled up in the driest corner, where Hux had dumped him a couple of hours ago--spoke up. _Your technique could use some work._

Hux had a fire going, hoping the wind would stay where it was because otherwise the shelter would turn into a smokehouse and he was already having the hells of a time trying not to cough. _Yes, well, I haven’t picked up a sword in...um. A long while. One does one’s best._

 _You did,_ said Ren. _You saved our lives. And you are still terrible with a sword. I need to teach you._

 _I can’t imagine it’s a valuable use of your time,_ Hux thought, glad not to be speaking out loud: talking made him cough, too, and coughing hurt his chest. _It’s not as if I’ll be called upon to conduct duels with a rapier anytime soon._

 _No, but you ought to know how to use a weapon, if you have access to it,_ Ren said, and that surprised Hux enough that he twisted around to stare at him.

 _What do you mean, have access to it? You don’t let anybody else touch that thing. With good reason, I might add. I nearly sliced my own thigh open more times than I want to admit, those cross-blade things are bloody_ stupid _, Ren._

_You did reasonably well, for someone who has never wielded a lightsaber. But I do not want you to be ignorant of the ways of it._

Hux blinked at him. _Why?_

 _Reasons_ , said Ren. _I feel terrible. What happened--that you saw?_

Hux explained, without having to use his words: the blue-white lightning, Ren’s collapse, the thing. When he had finished, Ren frowned up at him, lacing his long fingers behind his head, as if Hux had given him a particularly interesting problem to evaluate.

“I must go back,” he said, after a few moments. 

Hux scowled. “Absolutely not. That place is dangerous.”

“Not right now,” said Ren, curling under the thin blanket. “But I do have to go back. There is a reason I am here.”

“Yes, and it’s apparently _getting eaten by creatures_ ,” Hux said, and couldn’t help coughing, hard, muffling it in his elbow. It still hurt, more than he expected, deep in his chest. “--We’ve nearly done that part. What the hells do you think is _there?_ ”

“I don’t know. But it’s important,” Ren said. “And you sound awful.”

“I have a cold,” Hux told him, with dignity. “Mere mortals experience those. Go to sleep, we’ll work this out in the morning.”

“You should stay close to me. For warmth.”

“Inadvisable. You don’t want my cold.”

“I don’t have to point out the metatextual inconsistency of that statement, do I?”

“...Fine,” Hux said, shivering, and rearranged the fire so that it would burn down but hopefully still be wakeable in the morning. He crawled under the blanket next to Ren, sighing involuntarily when Ren pulled him close, Hux’s back to his chest. Something seemed to let go inside him at that, and he was astonished by just how exhausted he was, how much he had spent on their recent exertions. He slept almost immediately, slept deeply enough that his cough didn’t wake him for several hours, and did not dream.


	2. Chapter 2

In the morning it was still raining, which did not surprise Hux one little bit. As soon as his mind settled down from the standard _where am I, what is happening_ cascade of questions, he intended to move--to detach himself from Kylo Ren, get up and do something useful like stirring up the fire and finding something to eat--but he could not seem to summon up the energy. His chest hurt, heavy and too-hot, as if he’d been working terribly hard to draw in breath.

They lay curled up together, his back to Ren’s chest, under the blankets--and Hux thought of Kellan IV in the snow, and waking in a different enclosed darkness to find Ren bending over him, and making a decision. 

Ren’s arm lay heavily over him, curled around Hux, and his fingers were clasped around a fold of Hux’s tunic--and he had to not think about the dream, weeks and weeks ago now, the dream of rescuing Ren from the dying ship. It wasn’t easy; the solid, reassuring weight of Ren lying behind him didn’t do enough to block out the memory of those white fingers clutching at him in a fictional extremis. 

He closed his eyes again, not willing to expend energy to free himself, and tried not to think about the lightning-bolt yesterday, before the monster. It had...passed through Ren. Caught him fairly in the middle of the open space between the ruins. Had that done lasting damage? Would Ren ever admit it, if it had?

Hux could hear his own breathing much too clearly. It rustled and wheezed in his chest, and even after he’d finished each inhale or exhale the soft sighing note _went on_ a little longer, as if things in there were moving that he could not control. Hux registered this as a thing that was happening, and filed it under _not going to think about that right now_ , and turned his conscious awareness outward to their surroundings. 

He wasn’t sure if he was too hot or too cold, and didn’t think it mattered; his head was singing faintly, as if he were drunk. The rain was still raining, an unceasing soft grey curtain rippling beyond the open wall of the shelter he had built. Ren had said he wanted to go back, to visit the ruins again, and Hux was not at all sure that even given the advantage of the saber he would be able to fight off another creature. He wanted to get them both off this rock as quickly as possible, and began to think hard about what they had with them that might be pressed into service to extend their comm range. 

Back in another lifetime, in the Academy, they’d been trained to rig all sorts of things in all sorts of situations, and Hux found himself longing for the heavy horrible backpack they’d all worn on their runs through the misty pre-dawn dark, every day, no matter what. Everything about that memory was unpleasant except for the thought of what the packs had carried: food and water, a medkit, an emergency shelter, and--crucially--basic comm equipment that could be broken down and repaired without a great deal of complex detailed work. That had been part of their field training: if you didn’t manage to get your radio working to call in by the time the exercise was over, you didn’t get a ride back out of the woods. The comm equipment they had with them now was much more sophisticated, and delicate, than those old wrecks had been--and he thought perhaps that that was one of the reasons the Force seemed to knock it out more easily.

He thought about circuit diagrams, and about climbing trees in the rain with a coil of wire over his shoulder to rig an emergency antenna. Back then Hux had been full of the unconscious energy of youth, and his chest hadn’t felt as if it were full of hot mud with glass in it, but he thought he could probably still manage a brief tree-climb. If they could fix the damn transmitter. 

_You think--_ said Ren, inside his head. He pressed back against Ren, tugging the arm tighter over himself. 

_\--Too much, I know. I don’t suppose you’ve got a thirty-foot-long coil of wire somewhere about your person,_ he thought. 

Ren’s surprise colored the mind-touch, the words. _Wire?_

_Yes_ , said Hux, patiently. _We need to get off this rock, and that means summoning help, and that means expanding our comm range. An antenna would be helpful._

_Your mind is very...tidy, sometimes,_ Ren told him, and that brought on a small wave of amusement, just a chuckle, but that was enough to start Hux coughing. It was hard, and painful, and tight--the mental image was Starkiller in the snow, the cold so sharp it froze breath--and Hux found himself pulled close to Ren’s chest, held firm, those iron-bar arms steadying him as he fought for breath.

It helped much more than he had imagined possible, having something to brace against as the spasms shook him--he needed the support, the steadying, which was unacceptable: he should be able to handle this on his own. When it finally let go Hux leaned helplessly against Ren, gasping, each breath pulling a soft but undeniable _note_. He ached all over. 

_You_ are _unwell_ , Ren said. 

_I’ll do. Never mind about me, what the hells are you supposed to be doing with that...that ruin, and is it going to shoot you with lightning again, because if so you are_ not _going_ back.

_You would prevent me?_

_Well yes, of_ course _I would._

_You really mean it_ , said Ren, almost puzzled, vague. Hux wanted to advance the opinion that this was a stupid question, and that in fact everything about their current situation was stupid, but when he drew breath it caught miserably in his throat and he was coughing again, feeling things move in his chest that should not be there. Ren held him steady through it, which was again of more help than Hux wished to acknowledge. 

When he could put words together again, Hux--glad at least that it seemed to have warmed up a lot since yesterday--insisted that if Ren was going to go back to that place, he needed backup.

“You’d be my backup?” Ren asked, out loud. 

“I’m not seeing where you have a lot of choice. If you’re going, I’m going with you.”

“You’re ill,” said Ren.

“I have a cold. Look, come on, let’s do this if we’re doing it. I want to get to work on the comm.”

“So stay here and work on it,” said Ren. 

“Like hells. I saw what it did to you the last time. This is a command decision, Ren. If you go, I’m going.”

“...Very well,” said Ren, after a moment, letting him go, and Hux sat up, pulled the coat tighter around his shoulders, and poked at the fire. It was some small but present comfort that he’d managed to build and bank it last night in such a way that it could be easily blown and coaxed into life again this morning. 

“Get the mess kit,” he said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Yes, neither am I, but this is not negotiable: you need nutrients. Give me the damn mess kit.”

Ren handed it over without further protest, and he stopped thinking and went through the motions of heating water from their canteens in the kit’s smaller pan and mixing up the ration glop, not even aware that Ren was watching him until he turned to push a mug into Ren’s hands. “Think of something else,” Hux said, “and just drink it, it’s godawful but you need the energy. _We_ need the energy.” 

He wrapped his hands around his own mug, and the heat of the instant soup helped a little. Hux knew exactly what it tasted like, and had to hide a little wry smile at the face Ren made, but was mildly gratified that Ren made no further protestation. 

~

Despite the continuing rain, they could see a little better than they had the previous afternoon, and gave the hulk of the dead many-eyed creature a wide berth as they passed. Looking around, Hux could make out what must have been carvings underneath the knots and tangles of vines that laced over the ruined temple. It had been a steep, stepped pyramid, shattered down the middle, as he’d thought before; but now he could see that the boulders lying around the main ruins were pieces of what must have been the top of the pyramid--as if it had thrown them off in some unimaginable eruption before breaking in half. 

The rocks where the lightning-bolt had appeared did not seem to show any difference in texture or shape to their surroundings, but Hux could feel a sort of intensity in the air when they drew near, like the potential in the air before a thunderstorm. He wanted to tell Ren to stop, to keep back from whatever was waiting there, but he didn’t have the breath for it--and in any case Ren would not have heard him. He was in what looked to Hux like the edges of a trance, eyes wide, moving slowly down the space between the two halves of the temple. With a kind of horrified fascination, Hux saw that his hair--heavy and wet--was moving a little, the lighter strands actually separating and standing out from his head, as some unthinkable charge built up. 

He knew it was going to happen a fraction of a second before the light came, a bolt of brilliant blue-white light as thick around as Hux’s wrist that snapped out of the rock on both sides of the corridor--but this time, instead of being pierced through by the bolt, Ren _caught it_.

He was standing in the middle of the space with his hands stretched out to either side, and the lightning crackled out of the rock to his left and right and...met the palms of his hands, and _stopped_. In the flaring actinic light he looked entirely black and white, his face marble, set in an expression of terrible, terrible concentration. 

Slowly, as Hux stared, he seemed to gather his strength, and little by little stood up straighter, holding the lightning in the palms of his hands, his hair whipping around his face in black tangles sparked with blue. Hux watched, frozen, unable to move or speak, barely able to breathe, as Ren’s eyes slowly opened--and as he turned a blank black gaze to the walls on either side of him, and took a deep breath, and closed his hands. 

The light snapped off as if it had never been there, leaving dancing afterimages lurching crazily across Hux’s vision. There was just rain, and the smell of ozone sharp and intense in the air, and Kylo Ren standing with his head down and his hands empty at his sides, breathing hard. As Hux watched he swayed a little, only just catching himself before he lost his balance, and something about that freed Hux from his own frozen immobility. 

He stumbled forward and got his arm under Ren’s shoulders, ignoring the blue sparks that snapped painfully at him as he made contact, and Ren stiffened only briefly before leaning against him with most of his weight. Through the sodden robes Hux could feel him shaking steadily. “What the hells was that?” he demanded. 

“I’ll explain...later,” Ren said, sounding as if he’d just run up a long flight of stairs. “The danger is past. We need have no fear of this place, now.”

“It’s not going to be...doing the lightning thing any more?”

“No. It is under my control.”

Hux didn’t know what he’d just seen, but it had _looked_ an awful lot like Kylo Ren manipulating several million volts of electricity with nothing more than his brain. Admittedly it was quite a good brain, but still, Hux couldn’t imagine it had been close to easy. “Are you all right?”

Ren nodded, eyes closed, and leaned against him for a little longer before straightening up. “This way. There are steps down into the undertemple.”

“We’re going _in_ there?” Hux asked. He, too, was shivering.

“I am,” said Ren, putting on the mask; he’d been carrying it, and dropped it when the lightning struck. “You don’t have to. You should go back to the shelter and get warm.”

Hux rolled his eyes. “I said I’m not leaving you to do this on your own. Okay. Fine. Lead on.”

A few minutes later he wished he’d taken Ren’s advice. If the open air had been unpleasant, sodden and thick like damp wool, it had still been a thousand times nicer to breathe than the musty long-dead atmosphere in here. Also, it was _dark_ , which didn’t help. The flashlight he’d taken from their emergency kit picked out a narrow pencil of light, dust hanging in the air like steam, but didn’t do much to illuminate the surroundings. They were in a narrow stone-walled passageway that ran from the bottom of the steps straight back under this half of the ruins. 

Ren apparently didn’t need light to see by, even with that bucket over his head, and this annoyed Hux out of all proportion. Of course Ren could see in the dark, and catch lightning bolts with his palms, and possibly _fly_ , Hux would not be at all surprised; by contrast he had rarely felt more useless, more superfluous, a liability rather than an asset. But he couldn’t have stayed outside and watched Ren disappear into the dark, any more than he could have _not_ snatched up the lightsaber when there seemed to be no other choice. 

He was concentrating very hard on breathing--careful sips of air, because anything deeper would almost certainly bring the coughing on again, and this was not the time or the place. Concentrating sufficiently hard that when Ren stopped, Hux walked right into his back. He was becoming increasingly aware that this was probably not, as a matter of fact, just a cold. 

Ren steadied him. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, softly, and through the mask it took on a sibilant menace. 

“I know,” Hux said, carefully. “Get on with it.”

He couldn’t see a thing, but somehow he felt Ren’s frown nonetheless, and frowned right back at him in the dark. After a moment Ren sighed and continued on down the passageway, which almost immediately opened out into a chamber. Hux’s tiny flashlight beam played over an arched ceiling, pillars of stone. Dust lay thick-furred on everything: nobody had been down here, nobody had disturbed this silence in what looked like a hundred years. 

There was a low plinth, or possibly altar, at one end of the room, and on this lay something Hux couldn’t make out through the dust and gloom. Ren crossed to it, moving with sure certainty, and picked it up--some kind of loop of chain, with a heavy pendant hanging from it--but as soon as he touched it he winced sharply with a hiss of breath as if it had burned him through the gloves. Hux wanted to say something, but didn’t know what, even if he’d been in any position to converse, and anyway Ren was hurrying back across the chamber to him, the thing in his hands held stiffly and awkwardly out. 

“Hold still,” he told Hux, and before he could protest had slipped the chain over Hux’s head to lie heavily around his neck. It...didn’t seem to hurt at all, even if it was uncomfortably heavy, and he blinked up at Ren, confused. “That’s it,” Ren said, “that’s what we came for; now let’s get out of here.”

That sounded like the best idea he’d had all day, and Hux followed him back down the passageway, which was very long and very dusty, and up the stairs into the grey rainy light of day--and then had to lean against a chunk of temple and cough until his head swam: the fit he’d been holding back the entire time they had been underground refused to be contained any longer. At some point Ren was there, guiding him to sit down before his knees could give out, steadying him as he’d done before, but Hux didn’t care about anything other than the increasing conviction that he would never be able to breathe again. When the coughing finally did ease, it took him a long time before he could wipe his streaming eyes and look up. 

Ren was standing a little distance away, unmasked, looking at him in what Hux identified after a few moments as _concern_. “What?” he rasped. It _hurt_. On some level it also hurt that Ren wasn’t right there, next to him, where Hux could use him to lean on instead of this highly unyielding lump of stone.

“You’re running a fever,” said Ren. 

Hux rolled his eyes and decided using his throat to talk right now was not a constructive application of resources. _I know_ , he said. _I have been all day. We’ve got your magic necklace, what we came for; let’s try and get ourselves off this dreadful little planet before any more things with too many eyes and legs come to investigate._

_I am more than capable of defending us against anything that should choose to attack,_ said Ren, but he sounded more distracted than anything. Hux blinked at him, and then looked down at the thing hanging from the chain around his neck. 

It was black metal, but where he rubbed the edges hard with his thumb a faint silvery shine appeared: not actually black, just deeply tarnished. The pendant was the size of a child’s fist, and consisted of what looked like two cloudy bluish-white stones set back to back in a complicated lacework of the blackened metal. He rubbed it with his thumb again, and saw one of the stones glow blue for a moment. _What_ is _this thing?_ he asked. _Why am I wearing it?_

_Because it is a powerful amulet,_ Ren said. _Powerful with the light side of the Force. It can do you no harm, but it is...unpleasant, for me, to touch it._

Hux remembered the wince as Ren had picked it up off the plinth, in the underground chamber. _Are you all right? Did it burn you?_

Ren stared at him, blinking. His hair was plastered to his head with the relentless rain, hanging over his face in wet draggles with drips on the ends. He looked as if Hux had perhaps grown a second head, or demanded of him to turn into a spaceship and fly them to safety. “What?” Hux said out loud, and coughed again, less violently this time. 

“You’re asking _me_ if _I’m_ hurt?”

“Of course.”

Ren shook his head, in apparent wonder. “You’re extraordinary.”

Hux was saved from trying to find an answer to that by another fit of coughing. He was exhausted by it now, so exhausted in fact that he didn’t protest when Ren drew him to his feet and took most of his weight. Then they were walking, or at least Ren was: he was stumbling along, trying to think through the enormity of the pain in his chest and the difficulty breathing and how everything was much too cold and hot at once. He did his best to help their progress, but he wasn’t much use, and it was Ren who did most of the work getting them back to the shelter. 

He was lying down, now, and shivering so hard his teeth clicked together; ice seemed to have seeped into his bones, the way it did on Starkiller. He was freezing but his chest was on fire, and that made no sense, he wanted to point out that it made no sense, but he could not speak. Everything seemed to be crawling, flickering, as if seen through firelight. 

Time went soft, stretching. He was in the shelter on Felthor, with Ren; he was watching Starkiller die; he was...ten years old, glowing with fever, fighting for breath through what felt like thick hot syrup in his chest and _not_ crying despite the fear and pain, _not_ crying because he was a Hux and the Hux code did not include weakness as an option, _not_ crying because his father might hear about it afterward and give him that ice-blue _look_ , the one that said clearer than any spoken phrase could cut _You disappoint me_. He couldn’t control the coughing at all, though, and that did bring tears to his eyes, curled over in the grip of something merciless and very much stronger than himself, shaken and tossed, his increasingly frantic attempts to breathe between the spasms becoming desperate, hysterical--

\--and there had been cold, hard hands out of the terrifying confusion, metal hands that gripped his shoulders--no, not hands, manipulators, a droid’s manipulators--and the cold sting of a hypospray in his arm, and a mask over his face, and he began to slide away into unconsciousness still clutching at the droid’s unyielding metal fingers--

\-- _human_ fingers, a hand on his cheek, his forehead, terribly gentle, and he was lifted up, leaning against someone, and there was a cup with something hot and very bitter, and he tried to push it away but the someone was implacable and he eventually swallowed most of it, feeling a little better for the warmth, but still heavy with misery, and then--

\--then there was a different warmth, not the bitter medicine but a heat that seemed to come from inside himself, a heat that did not burn even as it grew and grew and sent tendrils out through his chest, little by little but not slowing or stopping, until his whole body felt full of a warm gold light that took away the pain, and he thought of hands, of bones mended by thought, and part of him was able to think _Ren, it’s Ren, he’s_ fixing _me,_ and then _it’s so beautiful_. 

The heat went on flowing, and Hux realized he was lying in Ren’s arms, could feel Ren’s breathing slow and steady and even, and he tried to match that easy rhythm with his own, and somewhere in the middle of that he fell asleep.

~

This time when he woke he knew exactly where he was, even before he opened his eyes, because of the constant patter of rain above them. _Oh, hells_ , he thought muzzily, _we need to get back to the temple and find Ren’s thing, whatever it is, and get off this rock_ , and then _we did that, though, didn’t we?_ and then _I wonder how long I’ve been out._

He sat up. Ren was lying beside him, heavy with the graceless weight of total unconsciousness, and Hux was alarmed to note how grey he looked, how heavy the shadows had grown under his eyes, and then realized belatedly that he himself could _breathe_.

He took an experimental deep breath. There was still pain, and enough of it that he did not want to push the issue, but...he could breathe, and did not feel as if he was about to dissolve into helpless frantic choking. He rubbed at his chest, still feeling the ghost of that amazing bright warmth, and wondered how much energy Ren had put into him, and how much he might not have had to spare. 

Hux leaned over him, stroking back the dark hair, and kissed his forehead. “Thank you,” he said, quietly, aloud, and pulled the blanket back over Ren, carefully moving so as not to wake him. Ren had done much, much more than his part: now it was Hux’s turn, and he took out the comm units and tried all frequencies: still static. Probably it was the temple ruins interfering with their signal--or possibly the necklace thing Ren had brought out of the ruins, he didn’t know how that worked, and he wasn’t wearing it at the moment so presumably Ren had put it somewhere safely out of the way. Still, they had spent two nights now in this bloody place, and Hux was not going to entertain conjecture of a third. 

He sat back on his heels and bounced one of the comms in his open palm, and began seriously to _think._

By the time Ren woke, some hours later, Hux had the insides of one of the two comm units disassembled and laid out in bright order in front of him, and the air in the shelter was sharp with the familiar sting of ozone. The hilt of Ren’s lightsaber was carefully wedged between several rocks, with the tip of one of the crossvent-blades pointing upward, and Hux was using the intense heat of the air just beyond the blade’s tip as a makeshift torch. He finished soldering a connection and carefully set everything down before muffling a coughing fit in his elbow: it still hurt, hurt badly, but he could _think_ clearly now, and the lack of dizzy singing in his head suggested his temperature was close to normal. 

He picked up the work again and bent over Ren’s saber, but a slight movement from the bedroll made him straighten up and look over. Ren was blinking slowly at him through tumbled hair, still looking grey and exhausted even in the red light of the blade, but at least conscious. 

“Back with us?” Hux said, or tried to say, and made a face at the whistling croak that his voice seemed to have become. His throat felt as if it had been sandblasted. _Damn. I shall have to communicate via sign language, or possibly semaphore. How are you feeling?_

Ren did a bit more slow blinking, and Hux absolutely could not prevent himself from leaning over to stroke the hair away from his face. _What...are you doing?_ he asked, sounding achingly worn even in Hux’s head. 

_My job_ , Hux told him. _I should be able to amplify our signal a lot, but we won’t be able to use voice: it’ll have to be pulse code. And we need to get further away from this place before trying to transmit, and possibly do it from halfway up a tree._

_You’re...using my lightsaber,_ Ren said, apparently lagging somewhat. 

_Yes,_ said Hux, and had to cough again, an unpleasant heavy sound like fabric being torn. _It has a certain rough utility. Also, thank you._

_For what?_

_Repairing me. Again. I appreciate it, even if you shouldn’t have put quite so much effort into it; I can almost see through you._

Ren stared up at him. _You were...delirious,_ he said, after a pause. _I had to do something._

_Well_ , said Hux, rubbing at his chest, _you did. I feel worlds better. Although still very much inclined to get out of here in a hurry. I should be finished with this soon._ He leaned over and poked at the embers of the fire, which were still smoldering, and set his metal canteen in them. _Go back to sleep for a while. There’ll be regrettable instant soup when you wake up, and we can try to make a move._

He wanted to talk to Ren about what had happened--about that astonishing sense of being filled with reparative warmth, about just how _much_ effort had gone into it, and why he’d done it now, and not on Kellan. But that could wait. Everything could wait, Hux thought, picking up his wires and circuit boards again and bending over Kylo Ren’s stupid, if admittedly somewhat convenient, lightsaber. The thought occurred to him as he squinted into the brightness that perhaps, if Snoke continued to send them on these little jaunts through the galaxy in search of mystic ancient amulets, that in future they would do well to make sure they had some form of communicative technology with them that did _not_ die inconveniently when exposed to intense Force energy. And, furthermore, that instead of assuming he and Ren would be just fine on their own and to stay the hells out of it unless and until summoned, the support offered by the _Dark Heart_ should probably take on a somewhat more active role in their on-world activities. 

Hux eased two wires together just at the point where the heat of the saber’s crossblade tip could melt the solder without melting the wires, and smiled a little in satisfaction at the bright silver flash and flow. And got on with it.


	3. Chapter 3

“So,” said Hux, several days later. “What exactly am I looking at?”

They were in Ren’s quarters on the _Dark Heart_ , which were about as ascetic and characterless as Hux’s own, although subtly less organized. The jewel hung in the air between them, turning gently, light catching and flaring in the curves and angles of the metal, glowing in unpredictable electric-blue flashes from inside the pair of white gems. “I know what I _see_ ,” Hux added. “But tell me what I’m looking at.”

Ren gave him one of those appraising, slightly insultingly surprised looks. “A distinction surprisingly few people seem to make,” he said. “This artifact is known in the ancient records as the Eye of Khi, to rhyme with _free_. It is made of imbrium, one of the rarest metals in the galaxy. It is worth considerably more than the ship we’re on at the moment just for the metal.”

Hux swallowed, watching it turn. It looked like silver, only darker and somehow heavier, its luster more greasy than silver's bright white glare. The chain dangling from its bail was worked with complicated knotting and lacing. “What are the stones?”

“Zuvendian lacrimolite,” he said. “Also rather startlingly valuable. They don’t look like much--cloudy, whitish, partly translucent, but you’ve seen that blue flare?”

“Only at some angles,” said Hux. 

“When it is in use, that light would be sufficiently bright to damage your vision if looked at directly for very long. I told you it was powerful with the light side of the Force; if you want a physical analogy, it is...oh, _hot_ , perhaps. Or strongly radioactive.”

Hux couldn’t help drawing back a little, and Ren laughed his little half-laugh. “It can’t hurt you. It can’t actually _hurt_ me, but touching it is unpleasant. It...calls, to the part of me that is light, and we’ve already discussed the ramifications of that.”

Not in detail they hadn’t, Hux thought. “I still don’t really get the light and dark thing as clearly as I’d like. But this thing, this Eye, what does it actually, um, _do_?”

“It behaves like a focative prism.” Ren didn’t touch the amulet, but it moved slightly as if he had tapped it with a finger, and began slowly turning in midair once more. “Not unlike a kyber crystal, but with subtly different properties. I know it sounds...lurid...but you’ve heard stories of ancient cults with great stone idols of their gods set with--”

“--with jewels for eyes?” Hux said. “Really?”

“That is, in fact, why it’s called the Eye of Khi. Really. It is...very old, and how it fell into the hands of the Jedi is also a long story, but they did get their hands on it in an earlier age, and found that it was naturally strong with the Force, and in order to prevent the dark side turning it to their nefarious uses they locked it away in that storeroom under the protection of, as you saw, some fairly serious forces.”

“What happened there?” Hux asked. “To...break the temple in half. Was it a groundquake?”

“In a way. When I went back and...encountered...the defenses, the second time, I could see most of what had occurred. A group of dark-side users led an attack on the temple in an attempt to secure the amulet for use in a weapon, and...you would call it a spell, I suppose...the power that had been built into the structure of the temple itself reacted. Destructively.”

“It blew itself up so they couldn’t get hold of this thing,” Hux summarized. 

“Succinct but accurate. There were no survivors. Over the next few centuries the power in the ruins waned, which is why _I_ survived when we came along and triggered what was left.”

Hux winced, remembering. He had dreamed about that lightning bolt transfixing Ren, dreamed about it more than once, and tried very hard not to think of it more than he could help. 

When they had finally been able to make contact, the _Dark Heart_ ’s rescue party hadn’t taken long to find and retrieve them. Both Hux and Ren had spent some time in the medbay, this time, and as soon as Hux had been pronounced fit for duty he had thrown himself completely into that duty; it was only now, some days later, that he had made the spare time to try and get some answers out of Ren. 

They were to rendezvous with another of Snoke’s ships and make their way, escorted, back to the asteroid base to hand the amulet over in person. Hux wasn’t looking forward to it, but he thought that their embarrassing failures might be counterbalanced by the fact that they had found what Snoke was looking for, and obtained it. Even if the circumstances under which it had been obtained were regrettable.

“Don’t _worry_ so much,” said Ren, and he blinked, shaking off the mental image, and scowled. 

“It’s not worrying. It’s strategic foresight and analysis of potential outcomes.”

Ren stared at him. “That’s...the most remarkably illustrative thing you’ve said in a long time.”

“What do you mean, illustrative?”

“The way you think is both distinctive and idiosyncratic,” Ren said, with the air of somebody steepling his fingers, although he didn’t move. 

“Never mind the way I think,” said Hux, who could feel the tips of his ears going red. “Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about...well actually, okay, maybe _you_ have some idea why I’ve been able to hold conversations with myself inside my own head, just recently, and why I can sometimes tell where you’re looking even underneath that bucket. It’s somewhat...alarmingly inexplicable. And if the answer is _you’re going crazy, Hux,_ well, keep that to yourself.”

Ren sat forward in his chair, looking intently, intensely at him. Hux stared back. “What? What did I say?”

“Fascinating,” Ren murmured. 

“What is?” Hux was sure that Ren had gone from a seven to a solid twelve on the _infuriating_ scale ever since they’d returned from Felthor, and wondered if he was being so exasperating because something back there had...damaged him. 

“I’ve read about it, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the phenomenon in action. --Close your eyes,” he said, before Hux had a chance to reach across the distance between them and shake him until his teeth rattled. The instruction was so unexpected that Hux found himself obeying without thinking about it. 

“Good. Keep them closed. I’m going to...move certain things around, and I want you to tell me where I’ve put them.”

“Ren,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”

“Humor me. I think I can explain what’s happening to you, but I want to get an idea of its extent.”

“What’s happening to me? You do know how ominous that sounds, right?” Hux asked, his eyes still closed. 

“It’s not a bad thing. Nor is it permanent, I think. Stop talking and keep your eyes shut and tell me where I have put…” he paused, and Hux could feel movement in the air…”my datapad.”

“It’s on the edge of the sink,” said Hux without thinking about it. “Put it back.”

Another faint riffle of movement. He had thought it was air touching his face, but now he was not so sure, and his unease was growing, a pressure in his stomach. “And your hat,” Ren said. It had been lying on the table where Hux had dropped it, but it...did not feel as if it were there now. 

He wasn’t sure where it _was_ , but Hux squeezed his eyes shut and...did not exactly think, but listened. “You haven’t...put it anywhere,” he said. “It’s not touching anything. It’s...you’re floating it, aren’t you.”

Hux realized that he could feel something else, something a little like the pull of a magnet, or the strange invisible attraction of static cling, as well as a sensation of something like heat or density, very near by. Very near by, and in fact exactly...where Ren had been holding the amulet thing turning in midair. Now the unease was not just unease but alarm, and he opened his eyes to find he was staring directly at the jewel.

And that Ren was, in fact, floating his hat about six feet off the floor. “Put it down,” he said, automatically. “ _What is going on?_ ”

“You’re sensitized,” Ren said, and the hat returned biddably to the table by Hux’s elbow. “I’ve never seen it before, but you’re sensitized.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s really not.” 

The amulet was still turning gently, and now Ren let it, too, settle back into its box. Hux felt a disproportionate sense of relief when it began obeying the laws of physics, and stared from it to Ren with his eyes wide. This couldn’t actually be happening, for a number of reasons, and he wondered if perhaps he had dreamed this entire conversation and would wake up any minute tangled in the bedclothes and gasping. 

Ren was staring intently at him, with a kind of wonder on his face that did nothing for Hux’s unease. “Remarkable. I should have noticed before, I suppose, but I’ve been rather busy.”

“ _Ren_ ,” he said, almost pleading, and coughed: the doctors had told him that would probably stick around for a while, and he had been irritated to discover they were right. “What do you mean, _sensitized?_

Some of the wonder flickered into concern. “It’s really not a bad thing,” Ren told him. “It’s...do you remember when I told you a little about the Force, back before Kellan? How one can draw a parallel between it and the other forces in the universe, in particular electromagnetism?”

“I don’t think you said anything about the other forces,” Hux said. “But...no, that does make sense, in a way: gravity, strong and weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and...the Force?” _The Force force_ , he thought, and stifled a slightly unsteady snicker.

“Yes,” said Ren, and now he was actually smiling: it lit his whole face, made him look terribly young again. “Yes, precisely. It has polarity, two distinct opposing but equal types of influence. Somewhat like positive and negative charges. Or...go deeper, to the subatomic level.”

Hux was beginning to be excited despite himself. “Spin,” he said. “The light and dark are, what, spin directions? And they determine the, not the magnetic moment of a particle but its Force moment? Its propensity to align relative to the surrounding Force?”

“ _Yes_ ,” said Ren, once more--and now he was not just smiling but beaming, and Hux could feel that bright gold _yes_ threatening to spill over inside him. “Do you know, you’re the only person who’s ever understood that in those terms?”

“Well, it makes sense,” Hux said. “As much as anything about this can make sense, I mean. Ren, what do you mean _sensitized_? Is it like..” He stopped, staring. “Oh, hells. Have you magnetized me with your brain?”

Ren sat back in the chair, laughing, clearly delighted, and his delight made Hux’s general sense of discomfiture with the universe and his place in it crack and fall away in pieces. “In a way, that’s exactly what I’ve done. You don’t have natural Force sensitivity, you weren’t born with it--but you’re not naturally resistant, either, and spending a lot of time near powerful Force-users is known to...align the dipoles, as it were, and lend you a little sensitivity of your own. It’s not permanent, as far as anybody knows. But you’ve been in the middle of quite a lot of Force activity just recently, it’s not surprising to me that you should have picked up a little something.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” he said. In the days since they’d come back from Felthor they had not been...talking to one another via thought, as if they had made some unspoken agreement not to, and Hux was missing it much more than he’d anticipated. He wasn’t even sure why they’d been avoiding it, either; it just seemed for some unknown but distinct reason to be advisable. 

“I know,” said Ren, sobering. “The...the healing thing.”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Well, everything, really. Like...how did you _do_ that. And why didn’t you stop before you drained yourself to the point of exhaustion. And if you _can_ do things like that, which I really should have known based on the hand thing, back in the beginning, why didn’t you do it on Kellan?”

“That...is a lot of questions,” said Ren, and the joy had gone out of him, and Hux ached for it. “But I will at least try to answer some of them. You deserve answers.”

Something about that statement felt a great deal more significant than the words themselves might seem to indicate. He almost wanted to take it back, to release Ren from the onus of explaining, but stayed silent. 

“Force-users’ manipulation is individually unique; no two users will lean on it quite the same way, shape it with their will exactly as another might. Some users of the Force are particularly talented in manipulating thoughts and feelings; others in manipulating matter; others in communicating over vast distances without external aid. There are other...specializations...but those are perhaps the most common.”

Hux nodded. “And you can do all of them,” he said. 

“And I can do all of them. Making things float, or stopping lightning bolts, is easy: that’s simply applying sufficient influence to counteract the existing forces acting on matter.”

“Easy,” Hux repeated, coughing. 

“Well. _Relatively_ easy. I find it slightly more challenging to read and influence other people’s thoughts, although with the judicious application of pain this becomes considerably easier. Pain is just matter, of course. All I’m doing is stimulating nerve endings.”

“And communication?”

“Again, I’m very good at it, but it takes more effort and concentration than making things float.”

“What about...I keep thinking of the way the Sith were supposed to draw power from negative emotions,” said Hux. “That they needed the hate, anger, all that sort of thing in order to keep going.”

Ren pushed his hair back, and Hux squashed a powerful urge to lean over and do it for him. At the thought, he saw Ren’s eyes widen fractionally, and a little smile tugged at his mouth. “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll distract me and I do not think I have the...nerve...to begin saying all this again, if I stop now.”

_That_ wasn’t alarming in the least, Hux thought. “Fine,” he said, out loud, “but as soon as you’re finished talking--”

“Then you may do whatever illogical things you wish to my hair,” Ren said, but the little smile was still there. 

“Continue,” Hux told him, clasping his hands firmly together. 

“The Force is not merely describable in terms of physics,” Ren said. “It has a significant spiritual aspect as well, which must not be overlooked. The user’s thoughts and emotions color their ability to interact with it, shape and determine the things they will be able to do, the parts of the Force they may draw upon. This is why the dark and light sides are so clearly associated with strongly opposing emotions. And the emotions which particularly work with the dark side are...not stronger, perhaps, but can be evoked more easily and powerfully than others.”

“Anger, hate, fear?”

“Yes. Those come easily, and it is just as easy to intensify them, to...push them higher. And the more intense the emotional state, the stronger the connection to the Force, and thus the more powerful the user becomes. It is...why they would deliberately cause themselves pain, for the strength and power resulting from the pain’s effect on their feelings.”

Hux stared at him. 

“It only sort of works,” Ren said, without meeting his eyes. “And it does not work for very long. And...I think...only if you truly believe.”

“ _Ren_ ,” he said. “Did you...were you…”

“On Starkiller? Yes. During the duel.”

He could remember how terribly bruised, how pulpy Ren’s wounded side had looked in the brilliant light of the transport’s medbay. “You…” he said, trailing off, unable to find the correct words to express the _incredible fucking stupidity_ of every aspect of that situation. “You...if you ever, ever, _ever_ do something like that again, I will…” 

He still couldn’t find words. Court-martialling wasn’t an option. Ren was looking at him through the hair, and Hux was appalled to see that he was actually smiling a tiny little bit. “I will...” he said again, and stopped, stuck at the same place. 

“‘...do such things’,” Ren murmured, “‘what they are I know not, but they shall be--’” 

“‘--the terror of the world’,” Hux finished for him, and sat staring openmouthed, most of his anger forgotten. “Where the livid hells did you pick _that_ up? That’s _King Suul_. I only know it because Grignard of Vega turned it into an opera, which he really ought not to have tried.”

“I have studied other things than how to make objects float with my brain,” Ren said, with mild dignity. “Occasionally. You were saying?”

Hux slumped, running his hands through his hair, effectively defused. “I was saying _don’t do anything like that again,_ or I will have to get creative, and I don’t enjoy attempting creativity. No Sith auto-flagellation, or...or whatever that was.”

“I think I can safely promise it will not happen again,” said Ren. “As I said, it did not...work tremendously well. As is obvious from the outcome of that encounter.”

Hux winced, the image of blood still vivid in his mind. “Go on.”

“Where was I?”

“Emotions and the dark side.”

“Ah. Yes. So...there is a polarity between the sides on the subatomic and the macro levels. To deny that is foolish. But to...deliberately limit oneself and one’s interactions with the Force to _only_ one side is, well. Inherently inefficient, in a way. I am much, much more powerful with the dark side than the light, for several reasons. But I am not entirely committed to it, despite the efforts I have made. In a way I don’t believe it is possible to be completely committed to either side, no matter what the Jedi might think. You cannot exist without your shadow.”

“But this...pull, you talked about. You said it hurts.”

“It does. It is...compulsion, in two directions at once. Everything is a choice, and every choice has a result, leaning toward one side or the other. I am drawn to the dark side because it fits me best, because it...harmonizes, with my mind, my heart. But there are things in me that are tuned differently, and those call to the light side. It is balance which is the hardest thing, and I am...not very good at it. Yet.” 

“Does it still hurt worse when you are near me?”

“Sometimes,” said Ren. “But it is not an unbearable hurt, and I am beginning to get used to it. One can, after all, always do what one must.”

It was surprising, to hear Brendol Hux’s words from Ren, words he could remember quoting himself. “The healing,” he said, without meaning to. “What side is that?”

“It isn’t.” Ren tucked the hair behind an ear again and now the compulsion was almost unbearable. Hux made himself stay still. “It isn’t _either_ side, and that is something I had not understood, until just recently. I think...perhaps that is part of what Snoke wanted from me, that understanding. The acceptance that it is possible to draw on both at once.”

“Why does he want that?”

“Because the potential power of a balanced-Force user is _vast_ ,” said Ren. “Much larger than either side on its own. A balanced-Force user could call upon twice the power, twice the energy, twice the influence. It would mean the end of the Jedi, and the dawning of a new age. One that Snoke could shape and form to his personal desires.”

Hux thought about that, and thought farther and farther away from this room, this ship, this galaxy. Ren was right: the potential significance was enormous. “But you did use both sides?” he said. “When you healed me.”

“Yes. That is why it was so difficult. I had to...balance them, to be the fulcrum, and even with both sides working together it took me a long time to knock out your infection.”

“Does Snoke know you can do that?”

“Not yet,” said Ren. “At least I do not think so.”

Hux looked down at his clasped hands, and then up at Kylo Ren, and by the light of burning bridges he asked, “Are we going to tell him?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit where it is so vastly due: the cleverer bits of the physics in here are the fault of [byzantienne](http://archiveofourown.org/users/byzantienne/pseuds/byzantienne), who knows what she is talking about. I am so proud of setting up a situation in which writing the line "oh hells, did you magnetize me with your brain" is a logical thing to have done.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> illustrated by [FlukeOfFate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FlukeOfFate)!

And so Hux had the pleasure of seeing Kylo Ren for once completely and utterly lost for words. Ren could be as silent as he liked behind the flat and frowning countenance of his mask without showing a hint of surprise, but like this--blinking at Hux, his mouth open, all artifice forgotten, he looked so _young_ , so _ordinary_ that Hux’s chest hurt. And, paradoxically, so young and mortal that Hux’s determination, which was still perhaps a little soft in the center, crystallized: no. _He would not tell Snoke_. Because this was...oh, this was world-breaking, in a way his Starkiller had never been, and could not have hoped to be. 

“You--” said Ren, and then sat down hard in the chair opposite him, with no grace at all. He looked rather as if someone had struck him. “You _mean that._ ”

“You know I do,” he said. “I don’t say things I do not mean, and anyway you can probably pick it out of my head with no effort whatsoever. But yes. I do.”

“Why?” said Ren. 

Hux sighed at him. “Because...this isn’t the way it should be,” he said, after a moment. “This isn’t right. It’s...it’s _ill-advised_. I don’t know what to do, but I _don’t_ want to hand this ability of yours over to him, without...some better conviction of its projected use.”

“You would...protect me?”

“To the best of my admittedly limited ability.”

“Why?” said Ren again, and this time Hux lost what was left of his temper--not even _at_ Ren, or with him, but with this whole wretched miserable complicated wreck of a situation.

“Because this is _stupid_ ,” he snapped. “I cannot bear stupidity. Or waste, which this also is. Even if I had not come to care about you very much, which in fact I have done, I could not countenance the nearsighted abuse or misuse of resources, and what I saw on Starkiller and on the asteroid and what you’ve told me since is enough to convince me that the current course of affairs is not tactically advisable. We did not have to target the entire Ileenium system; the Resistance base itself would have been sufficient for our purposes, we could have made use of the other habitable worlds in the system, and our move forced the Resistance hand and made them desperate, and desperation can breed very...creative solutions. It was unjustifiable. And his...use of you is also unjustifiable, given my limited understanding of the situation.” 

Hux ran his hands through his hair, not even noticing what he was doing, ruining its careful arrangement. He was up on his feet now, pacing Ren’s quarters, feeling almost feverish again: that sense of intensity, of head-singing focus, was back. “ _Resource management_ is key to any successful prosecution of war,” he continued, “from supply chains to troop movements to the balance of power in a cockpit or on a bridge, and so is appraisal and reappraisal of situations as they change, because otherwise there is unnecessary danger, loss, and _waste_.”

He stopped, catching his breath. “So,” he said, after a moment. “My advice is that we do not tell him what you have worked out how to do, and to this end I am going to need _you_ to tell _me_ how to...shield, at least a little, what I am thinking. Since I think so loudly.”

“Go back to the part where you care about me,” said Ren. 

Hux stared down at him. Not very far down; even sitting, Ren was tall. “What?” he said. “I do. You know I do, you’ve been sloshing around in my head like a damn dianoga ever since this whole business began, how can you _not_ know that?”

Ren stared back, and then held out a hand, and almost unwillingly Hux reached out to take it--and found himself drawn close, their fingers laced together. It was the hand Ren had first broken and then un-broken, the one that ached slightly in the cold along the invisible lines of those healed cracks. 

_I am not good at this,_ Ren said inside his head. _I am not...it’s not a thing I know how to do. That I was ever trained to do._

_In that, I think, we are at least equally inexperienced_ , said Hux, frustration and anger and fear layering on top of one another in his mind. 

_Perhaps. But I would ask that you...have patience, with me. I know it does not exactly come easily to you._ His mindtouch was oddly deferent, soft, quieter than Hux thought he could remember it ever being, as if Ren were unsure.

Hux stared down at him, at their clasped hands, his head full of a welter of thought-fragments, intense and kaleidoscopic and confused, and the realization came swirling and bobbing through the mess that Ren really _didn’t_ understand why he would care; that Ren, otherwise too perceptive, had no idea just how desperately appealing, if infuriating, he was to Hux, or how vitally important--how _necessary_ \--his existence, his presence had become; and that closed a fist inside his chest. He remembered, in the tent on Kellan, the edges of fear threatening to spread blade-sharp through his vitals as he waited for Ren to react to that first clumsy attempt at a kiss, and thought he could see a little of that same fear in the dark eyes now, looking up at him--and that Hux could not allow: he would not let that go on even a moment longer while he tried to find and organize an explanation. _Of course_ , he thought. _Of_ course _I’ll be patient, if you are too_ , and was unprepared for the flood of gold that poured through him, hot and bright and tingling in his lips and fingertips. 

Ren smiled, a tentative but very beautiful smile, and drew him down, and Hux could no more have stopped the _Dark Heart_ in its tracks without inertial dampers than he could have stopped himself folding into Ren’s lap and kissing him until his ears rang. 

~

Some little time later, as the moment neared when they would drop out of hyperspace to rendezvous with the other ship, Hux dismissed his officers from a final briefing. The unspoken trust and confidence with which they listened to his orders was nothing new to Hux, but he appreciated it more now than perhaps he had ever done before: there was a clearer, more present awareness that these people looked up to him, and believed that he would lead them _wisely_ , that the decisions he made would be the right ones. On the _Finalizer_ the sheer size of the command had made this rather more difficult to recognize, but the _Dark Heart_ was small enough that Hux felt the trust more clearly. 

Or possibly, he thought, that was part of this sensitization business, which...no. He was not going to think about that at the moment: he had things to do. Nor was he going to think about the fact that for the first time his own certainty about the rightness of his actions, of his decisions, was not entirely in accordance with his awareness of the Supreme Leader’s command. That there might be a rightness that was not Snoke’s rightness was so huge and terrible a concept that it was taking him a long time to chip away at the sides of it, fitting it into his mind and heart one shard at a time. 

He did not look forward to the moment when he would first have to give a command that...diverged...from Snoke’s, or to watching their faces when he did so, wondering where their loyalties might fall, and what he would have to do next. For now, though, he was reasonably confident that nothing seriously untoward would be waiting for them either at the rendezvous point or back at Snoke’s asteroid citadel. 

His chest still tingled with the echoes of golden heat, and he thought he could still feel the heavy softness of Ren’s hair beneath his fingers, the palms of his hands, as he was held close. They still weren’t very good at kissing, awkward and breathless, and Hux could not bring himself to mind despite his general antipathy to _not being good at_ something: this was different, this was an exploration, an unwinding of sorts, and it was much too irrationally delicious to waste any time bemoaning his own incompetence. 

His mouth had felt hot, swollen, when they finally untangled themselves, and part of Hux’s mind wanted very much not to stop at all, to unwrap Ren properly, to see him out of all those layers upon layers of heavy black drapery, to touch the skin he had only ever seen briefly in the wreck of the _Finalizer’s_ medbay. It was very unlike Hux to spend any time considering what people looked like under their clothes, but Ren wasn’t _people_ , he was...whatever he was, and Hux had a fleeting memory of blue shadows on milk-white skin that never saw sunlight, scattered here and there with those little dark spots like a starfield in reverse, and swallowed hard. They had stopped, because there was not a choice: both of them had work to do, and would be missed; but he had so very much not wanted to let go. Neither of them knew when they would have time like this again, just the two of them, inside this small and perfect circumscribed world. 

_You’re thinking again,_ said Ren, now, and Hux’s hands curled involuntarily, closing. 

_Yes_ , he said. _I can’t help it._

_You’re thinking about me._

_I am going to make you a small official name tag_ , Hux thought, _that says “Stater of the Obvious” in addition to all your other titles. And be cross if you do not wear it._

Ren’s mindtouch warmed with amusement. _Speaker of Truth_ , he said. _It is not so unreasonable a responsibility as all that._

_I just_ , Hux began, and sighed, leaning on the table in the deserted conference room. _I just wish I knew when we could expect to have time again._

_I know. I fear it may be incumbent on us to_ make _time; I doubt the universe is in the business of handing it out. So. Tonight, if there are no other engagements on your schedule, I think it would be as well to begin your training._ There was something new in his mindtouch now, a kind of mostly-suppressed excitement Hux hadn’t seen before.

_Training?_ he repeated.

_You asked me to teach you how to shield your thoughts. I don’t believe it can be done completely, but I think it’s possible you may be able to...turn down your volume, a little. Which is to be desired. Mostly._

_All right,_ said Hux, and didn’t try to ignore the way all the little hairs on his arms were standing up: any excuse to spend time with Ren was one he would cling to, even as he knew intellectually that that way seriously impaired judgment and poor decision-making lay. _My quarters or yours?_

_Hmm. Perhaps if I make a mild nuisance of myself you would have cause, as the ship’s commanding officer, to come and discuss it with me alone._

Hux couldn’t quite believe his not-ears. _Are you seriously suggesting deliberately making trouble to give us an excuse to--_

_To train,_ Ren said. _And you have spent what amounts to some straight hours, over the past year or so, complaining to yourself about my making trouble, as you put it. I hardly think the ruse is one that might arouse immediate suspicion._

_But Snoke--_

_May suspect something if I am too well behaved,_ Ren said smoothly. 

He had to admit Ren had a point. _Well...all right, but don’t overdo it._

_I promise._ He felt another of those ripples of gold warmth, and Ren retreated, but Hux’s fingertips and toes still tingled as if he’d just come in from the cold. 

~

It wasn’t until much later than either of them had planned that Hux got a chance to detach himself from his duties and visit Ren. The entire _Dark Heart_ was alive with a sense of celebration which he had done absolutely nothing to suppress or curb; he felt it too, for more than one reason. 

When they had dropped out of hyperspace, the starlines shrinking into dots and the entire structure of the ship shuddering around them, a _Maxima-A_ heavy cruiser had been waiting: precisely as specified, precisely where specified, and Hux on the bridge had felt a strange ripple of familiarity at the sight of it. They had hailed the ship, and shortly afterward a shuttle had emerged from the cruiser; and Hux had come down to the docking bay to meet it, along with his chief officers. They hadn’t been vouchsafed too many details about this part: only that they were to rendezvous with the ship that would be waiting for them, and proceed in formation to Snoke’s base; Hux expected one of Snoke’s lower-level command officers to be in charge of their escort, and was idly wondering if it would be Klee or Varenar, and if Varenar had managed yet to get his uniform tailored in such a way as to actually fit him, rather than making him look like a teenager in his elder brother’s clothing, when the shuttle ramp hissed open and someone quite different strode out. 

There were other suits of chrome armor in the ranks of the First Order’s military; there were other Captains who wore the mirror-finished plates beneath that red-edged cloak, but none of them were _this_ Captain. Hux would have known her anywhere, helmet or no helmet, and he actually stepped forward out of his careful little formation when she stopped several paces short of him. 

“Captain,” he said. He knew he was smiling, just a little; couldn’t help it. 

“General,” said Captain Phasma, and snapped off a perfect, textbook salute. “A pleasure to see you again, sir.”

Hux doubted that, rather, but merely nodded toward the blast doors leading into the ship proper, and they began to walk. “The pleasure is mine, I assure you. I...we...had no news of you, after Starkiller.”

Phasma kept in step with him, as she always had. He tended to walk too fast for people to comfortably keep up, and one of the restful things about her was that he never had to think about his pace as they moved; like Ren, she was taller than him, but unlike Ren, she never made a point of this. 

“It’s a long story,” she said, and sounded slightly rueful, cut-glass accent and all. “This escort was an assignment I was glad to carry out, sir. I understand your mission has been successful.”

Hux kept his expression neutral, with an effort. “Yes,” he said. “We retrieved the artifact the Supreme Leader had sent us to find. It’s in Ren’s custody at the moment.”

“May I see it?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ve had my meeting room prepared for this debriefing, but directly afterward I’m sure Lord Ren will be happy to show you the...object. It is apparently of extreme value.”

“So I gather, sir,” said Phasma. “I do have several matters to discuss with you on behalf of the Supreme Leader, but our schedule does not require an immediate departure. If it meets with your approval, I believe my men and yours might benefit from a small celebration, for the sake of morale.”

“By all means,” he said. “My crew--and my troops--have done exemplary work under rather trying circumstances just of late. I’ll give the order. You will join me for dinner?”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, with the edges of a smile in her voice. 

“It’s good to have you back,” he told her, with complete honesty--and yes, he really _had_ been…magnetized, to some extent, because Hux could tell she was smiling under the helmet; he didn’t even have to listen to the tone of her voice to be aware of it. 

“It’s good to _be_ back. And to see you, General.”

~

That had been...hours ago. Hours. And Hux was ever so slightly drunk; he and Phasma had done justice to quite a decent meal and some less-credible but rather effective wine while she told him of her escape from the refuse-compaction system using nothing but the equipment she had on her and the debris in the compactor cell, her appraisal of the situation once out, and her decision to get the hell into whatever would break atmo and depart the dying planet with all speed. Her description of pushing the soggy controls of a damaged TIE/fo to their limits, screaming out of the peeling-away layers of Starkiller’s sky just before it sucked everything back down into the fury of its imploding core would stay with Hux, whether or not he wanted it to; she’d eventually made contact with another First Order ship and nursed the crippled TIE close enough to be grabbed by a tractor beam. “We knew you and Ren had survived,” she had said. “Just not...quite in what shape.”

He’d told her about the _Finalizer_ ’s hyperdrive, its shielding damaged by the spike of bremsstrahlung radiation caught by the sheer bulk of the ship itself as Starkiller became a sun; told her about the work to repair it, the trip to Snoke’s base, the demotion to the _Dark Heart_. When, eventually, the word had been passed that Lord Ren was...actively displeased about something, and would Hux come to sort it out, Phasma had taken it as a tacit dismissal--and again, Hux had been so simply _relieved_ for her simple tact and understanding. Not having to say things out loud, being understood without the necessity of putting things into words, was such a remarkably rare and wonderful thing. 

She had returned to her _Maxima-A_ and he had made his slightly unsteady way to examine the (non-vital) console that would now need replacement post-lightsaber-tantrum. Hux had felt a spike of real irritation, looking at the deep gouges cut into the metal and plastic, and it must have shown on his face, because when he gave the order that he would be discussing the matter with Lord Ren and was not to be disturbed for anything short of a reactor accident, it was met with a wide-eyed fervent _yessir_.

Now, standing at Ren’s door, his hand raised to knock, he was not surprised when the door panel slid aside before he touched it, leaving him looking up into the mask with a warm singing consciousness of having had rather a lot of wine.

Ren stepped aside to let him in, and glanced up and down the corridor before closing the door behind him. “It took you long enough,” he said. “And you’re drunk.”

“Tight,” said Hux. “What I am is _tight_. And I’m here now, so stop complaining.”

Ren’s mindtouch was different, and he couldn’t work out quite how. When it clicked, he stopped halfway through taking off his coat and stared at the (stupid) mask, and at the face behind it. “You’re jealous,” he said, slowly. 

_Of course I’m not, don’t be ridiculous_ , Ren said. _Let’s get on with it._

_You are_ , Hux said, wondering. _Of her. Of Phasma. Do you really not know the difference?_

_This is irrelevant._

It was desperately touching, was what it was, and Hux subsided into a chair, looking up at Ren, his eyes half-lidded. _Well_ , he said. _Teach me._

Ren’s gloved hands closed for a moment, and he turned away; when he straightened up again he was back in charge of himself. He made no move to take off the mask. _Very well_ , he said. _You need control. Even the edges, the beginning of control would be an improvement over your current...broadcasting._

Hux refused to be insulted. _Everything has to start somewhere_ , he said. _So._

“So,” said Ren, out loud. “You have clearly never been taught...mental discipline. Discipline in general is not an issue, but you have never applied it to your thoughts the way you have applied it to your actions. It is possible to think about things without letting the universe know you are doing so.”

Hux watched him, waiting for him to say something useful. 

“...So,” Ren said, again. “I am going to ask you to think about something very specific, and attempt to prevent me from picking that image out of your mind. Use whatever tactics you like. Sometimes what comes naturally, unprompted, is the most successful approach. You need to be able to create a...a smokescreen. Some way in which to draw attention away from the things you are considering.”

“I’ll try,” said Hux, having no idea whatsoever _how_.

“Think,” said Ren, “about...a bright pink Chevin. And stop me from watching you do it.”

Hux could picture it, just out of sheer absurdity: the long face, the heavy bony topknot, the clutching hands--only not grey and black and green but bright cerise. 

“You’re not _trying_ ,” said Ren, crossly. “You might as well be yelling out loud.”

_Oh, shut up_ , Hux thought at him, and kept the pink Chevin in the back of his mind while he pulled at the first distraction that came to his grasp. A woman, singing, high and pure and sweet above intertwined lacings of melody: the Frast recording of La Phenix singing the _Tiefe Brunnen_ , the particularly clear effortless-sounding support of the F above high C that no other singer had ever really been able to match since, the first piece of real music Hux had ever heard, back in his physics master’s office, a lifetime ago. With the well-worn ease of familiarity, he played the mental aria while wondering if a pink Chevin would have purple eyes, and if it mattered in the least, and--

\--and Kylo Ren was leaning on the back of the chair, with his gloved hands gripping it so hard the stitching between the fingers was strained, and trembling slightly. Hux paused his mental playback and stared at him. “Ren?” he said. “Ren, are you all right?”

No response, for another long worrisome moment; then Ren seemed to get back some control. “Yes,” he said, not sounding remotely well, and then swallowed audibly. “That was...not bad. Try again with something else. Another image.”

“Are you sure--”

“ _Try again_ ,” Ren snapped. 

Hux sat up. This time he flipped through his mental library and came up with the andante movement of a Kallagyn symphony, one with lots and lots of rich sweet strings, and set that playing before he started considering a violently violet Hutt. It was...challenging, but not exactly _difficult_ , to keep them going at the same time; but he was so used to hearing the music on some level in the background of his mind that pushing it up to the volume where it might interfere with the rest of his thoughts was merely a matter of concentration. 

Ren made him do it three more times, and the last one was the slow movement of the _Ecliptic_ Sonata, the one with all the insistent repeating triplets and the meandering melody that dipped in and out of them like a slow needle passing through some dark and unknowable cloth, and Hux broke that one off because Ren was still leaning hard on the back of the chair and now seemed to be having some difficulty with his breathing. 

“ _Ren_ ,” he said, out loud. “What is it?”

With what looked like effort, Ren maneuvered himself around the chair’s back and slid into it, reaching up for the catches that sealed his mask to his collar. The faint click-hiss as they released seemed very loud in the new silence. He fumbled the mask and helmet off and dropped it on the table, and he _was_ breathing hard, as if he’d just been carrying something very heavy. The faint blotches of color high on each cheek were more noticeable than ever, and his eyes looked like wounds. 

“Hells,” said Hux, reaching out to him and not quite daring to make contact. “What’s...is it one of the headaches?”

“N-no. No. I just. I didn’t. I didn’t know. Is that what it’s like? All the time.”

“Is what what’s like?” Hux asked, confused. 

“The _music_. That...I’ve never...I’ve heard things played but never _like that_ ,” Ren said, and pushed his hands through his hair. “No wonder you have so much space taken up with it, Hux, that’s...that’s...I can’t…”

A small, but growing, flicker of heat and inspiration was licking at the back of Hux’s mind. “Did it work, though?”

“Did what...oh. Yes. Yes. It works. You’re...it works. You need practice,” he said, sounding a little more like himself. “It lacks finesse, control. But I have less to teach you than I had thought.”

“Really? Just listening to music inside my head works as a...a block?”

“Extremely well,” said Ren, finally appearing to catch his breath. He still looked shaken.

Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps sheer bloody-mindedness, perhaps the remarkably uncommon felicity of seeing Ren completely out of his depth for once; Hux would never be able to determine entirely what it was that motivated him to do what he did next. 

Sitting forward, leaning toward Ren, he sorted through his mental library for Novotai’s Requiem, the _Confutatis_ , and put it on. Insistent drums and strings filled his mind, and a beat later the voices came in, massed voices rising and falling together in harmony. Above it the horns sounded on and on, keeping time--and then all of the fighting intensity, the anger, the desperation fell away beneath high sweet voices over a simple series of arpeggios, so sweet and so clear as to be almost a denial of the insistent driving chorus of before--and then the lower registers came in again, still hard but inevitable now, a little more resigned. Then the aching clear purity of the _Voca me_ once more, like tears drawn out into fine thread and spun one by one, and then...oh, then the saddening and deepening of those voices into grey resignation, into quiet supplication, _oro supplex et acclinis_. 

_Stop_ , Ren said raggedly inside his head. _Stop, Hux, I can’t, I can’t bear it, I, I can’t breathe,_ help _me,_ and he let the last note linger and paused everything and reached for Ren without moving a muscle, reached out and wrapped himself around Ren’s overwhelmed and shaking presence in the mental space they shared, feeling Ren cling to him--afraid, and wonderstruck, and half-drowning--and for once, for once himself being the one to reassure and comfort. 

_I’m sorry,_ he sent, gently. _Too much?_

_Much too much, how...how can you bear it, how can you hear that, all of that, and not fly in pieces, I, it’s, I_ hurt _, Hux, it_ hurts _, it’s too beautiful…_

_Should I go?_

_No_ , and now Ren in his head was not clinging desperately for stability but wrapping just as tightly around Hux, octopuslike, determined and intent and rising in a tide of gold that made Hux just a little afraid at its intensity. _No. You’re not going anywhere._

Ren opened his eyes, and Hux had never seen him look like that, not ever, breathless and flushed and completely _alive_ , completely _present_ , in his body, in this room. The space between them, the physical spark-gap, suddenly felt like much too much distance to bear. Still shaking, Ren reached out his hands, and Hux took them like a man half-dazed by dream, and the contact sent shocks of gold racing through his mind, rebounding and rippling with dangerous force. He was tugged, hard, unmercifully, out of his chair, and found himself falling into Ren’s lap, and as the gold closed over his head he was aware of Ren’s mouth on his, Ren’s hands in his hair, Ren burning like a firebrand under his touch, Ren’s voice echoing and re-echoing inside his bones: _Play it again._

_Are you sure?_ he managed, somehow, dizzy and desperate and... _starving_. Ravenous.

_Play it again, Hux. And play it_ louder _, this time._

Then there were hands at his collar, hands slipping underneath the heavy stiff fabric of his uniform tunic, and as Hux brought the music back up inside his mind he thought it was deeper, richer now, as if played by two sets of instruments at once; and then everything stopped making sense, and he left conscious thought behind, and turned for a little while into something entirely new.


	5. Chapter 5

Coming to himself tangled in Kylo Ren was strange. Strange and unbelievably enjoyable. 

He woke slowly, gradually, by stages; and as each layer of his mind solidified its awareness Hux found himself more and more conscious of not only his own vast and lazy comfort but of Ren’s presence as a huge and complicated weight on reality. 

Hux was held close, as he had been in the tiny space of the emergency shelter on Kellan; close, with Ren’s arms hard around him. He decided it didn’t matter, at all, that he couldn’t currently move; that lying here entwined with Ren was more or less the most desirable outcome any choice of his could possibly have measured. He was full of an extraordinary warm lassitude, all his bones filled with a pleasant satisfying heat that sapped strength but replaced it with a total lack of concern. There were probably lots of other things that mattered, but just at the moment Hux could not come up with a single instance that took priority over this, just this, just this small bubble out of time, where he could observe Ren in peace. 

Ren _was_ blue-white, milk-white all over, unwrapped from his black drapery. Those little dark freckles were scattered over all the planes and angles of his body, and this had taken up quite a lot of Hux’s concentration and focus: each and every individual mote required to be acknowledged, counted, fixed in space and time. He hadn’t even come close to completing that particular task before other things had taken over his personal attention; now, slowly, lazily, Hux let his fingers drift over the white skin, the hollows and edges and desperately vulnerable softnesses, touching one tiny starpoint after another, cataloguing its presence and position in his mind. Some of them really required to be kissed, which would mean moving, which he wasn’t really willing to attempt at the moment; but he could memorize exactly where they were, and make a list for future attention. It was difficult to work out a sensible means of addressing himself individually to each tiny freckle when Ren was so damnably _present_ that he kept finding himself distracted by listening to him breathe, but Hux was determined.

_What are you doing?_

He propped his chin on Ren’s chest and looked at him through his eyelashes. Ren blinked slowly at him. _I’m working_ , Hux thought. _Go back to sleep._

 _It tickles_ , Ren said, and he didn’t think he’d ever heard Kylo Ren sound exactly that combination of sleepy and puzzled-pleased--almost _innocent_ \--and it made something in his chest turn over. 

_I can’t help that_ , he said, drawing circles on Ren’s chest with a fingertip. _It needs to be done._ He let a brief image of star-charts, points of light with names and coordinates, flicker through his mind, and got a ripple of fascinated surprise in return. 

_They’re just spots_ , Ren said. _I can’t imagine why you find them so appealing._

 _Because, and I believe I’ve said as much to you once or twice before, they are yours._ Hux scowled at him, fondly.

 _That doesn’t make any sense,_ Ren said. _I--_

 _Hush_ , said Hux, and ghosted the tip of his thumb over Ren’s nipple--fascinating, the way the tiny little bud of darker flesh tightened, drew itself up--and was rewarded by a mental _nnngh_ that sent shivers through his own skin. Ren’s arms tightened around him, hard. 

_That is_ not fair, Ren said in his mind. 

_Life isn’t fair,_ Hux said, but he was smiling, and when Ren’s eyes narrowed and he pulled Hux roughly up to be kissed, he went gladly, gold warmth spilling over inside his mind. 

~

He was reasonably sure he didn’t _look_ any different. Uniform and hair and polished boots and coat were all just as they usually were, and his face felt just as it always did--perhaps a bit redder around the mouth, maybe, but nothing too noticeable. 

Neither of them had spoken any of the questions swirling at the surfaces of their minds: _what was that, what are we, is it going to happen again,_ when _can it happen again, I need, I want, I, you, I._ Hux was good at compartmentalization, but it was difficult when the other person could look directly into your head, and he was feeling a little too wrung-out and sore around the brain to do much mental work just at the moment. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw the contours of white skin like a snowfield, blue-shadowed, dotted with those tiny dark spots, and that led to snow like stars caught in dark hair, and that led to other things he was not allowed to think about just at the moment because he had a job to do. 

Phasma was already on the main screen when he got to the _Dark Heart_ ’s bridge, ten minutes early, as per usual. One of the first things Hux’s people had to learn about working for him was that Hux’s _on time_ was everyone else’s _early_ ; he wasn’t unreasonable about it, never punished people unduly for tardiness when there genuinely were circumstances beyond their control, but along with the chilly eyes and the perfect uniform he possessed a sense of timekeeping almost as accurate as a droid’s. It spoke to Phasma’s own rigid self-discipline that she not only knew about it, but made sure that she had already put through the call when he arrived.

“Captain,” he said, and was a little glad to hear his voice sounded perfectly normal--a little hoarse, still, from the cough that refused to go away entirely, but normal and steady for all that. 

“General. Both ships are prepared to make the jump to hyperspace on your command.”

“Very good,” said Hux. “When we reach the Supreme Leader’s base, you will assume command of the flight and take both ships in.”

“Yes, sir,” said Phasma, and he took a deep breath and turned from the screen to his astrogation officer’s console, rarely having wanted to give an order less in his entire life. 

“On my mark,” he said. “Take us superluminal in three, two, one, _mark_.” 

The _Dark Heart_ shuddered all around them, clattering and creaking, as the hyperdrive motivators kicked in: beyond the viewports the starlines shivered and stretched out into the pale blue flare and flicker of hyperspace, and Hux clasped his hands behind his back and wondered what the hells he was going, when he got right down to it, to _do_. 

 

~

“General,” said Snoke, regarding him over steepled fingers. “Congratulations are in order.”

Hux was aware, now, of the pressure of Snoke’s mindtouch, like a thumb pushing firmly at the insides of his eyesockets. Not a sharp pain, but a dull sickening ache that he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to recognize. He had already filled his mind with spreadsheets and figures, with something mild but elegant playing in the background, and kept that running as he looked back at Snoke and felt that push, that nudge, inside the bones of his face. “Sir?” he said. 

“On Felthor. I understand that you were instrumental in the recovery of the Eye of Khi, and demonstrated significant resourcefulness under extremely difficult conditions.”

Prod, prod, prod. The invisible thumb was behind his eyes now. Had that mindtouch _always_ been there, every single time he’d reported to Snoke, and he simply hadn’t been _aware_ of it until Ren’s brain magnetized him to the Force? The thought was horrifying, and he shoved it as far down as possible under the numbers and the music, having to work harder than he had expected to keep this going. 

What had Snoke just said? _Think. Bloody well think, you are walking a very narrow ledge._ Then it came: Felthor. Resourcefulness. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “My training prepared me.”

Prod, _prod_. He couldn’t help a wince. Snoke leaned forward slightly. “Despite your indisposition,” he said. “I am told that when you were retrieved by the ship you were seriously ill.”

Hux blinked at him, keeping his expression neutral with an effort. This was much, much harder than he’d expected. “It wasn’t as serious as all that, Supreme Leader. I was released from medbay in a few days.”

“Mm,” said Snoke. “According to the report I have been given, your tests showed evidence of a recently-resolved, but highly dangerous, infection. You must have an extremely powerful immune system, General.” Prod, prod, _prod_. Hux fought down the urge to cough.

“I couldn’t say, sir,” he told Snoke, at his most wooden. 

“No,” Snoke agreed, with a smile he didn’t like one tiny little bit. “I don’t believe you could. Tell me about the temple, General. And Kylo Ren’s performance.”

He kept the smokescreens up, despite the fact that this was an increasingly unbearable strain, as he described the ruins of the temple and the lightning-bolt that had attacked Ren. Part of his mind was focused on calculating the _Dark Heart_ ’s consumable rate based on projections from the past days of work, and he had rarely found simple arithmetic so trying. 

“So _you_ used _Ren’s lightsaber_ ,” said Snoke. 

“My blaster was jammed,” he said. “There was no other weapon available, and the animal was attacking.”

“Quite so. Did you enjoy it?”

Hux stared at him. “Sir?”

“A simple question, General.”

Hux refocused his eyes on a point just above Snoke’s left shoulder. The relief was instant, but short-lived. “No, sir. I cannot say with any veracity that the experience was an enjoyable one.”

“Mm,” said Snoke again, and now the _prod_ was strong enough almost to make him stagger, as if it had been a physical force. “Go on.”

Hux told the rest of the story, in as few and concrete words as he could manage, holding on with what he hoped was invisible effort: the return to the temple, Ren’s successful effort to control the defense mechanism, their discovery and retrieval of the Eye. He left out his own dissociative dreams of being a child again, the cold hardness of the droid’s manipulators steadying him in the midst of all that fear and pain, and decided the description of his use of the lightsaber as a makeshift soldering iron also did not need to find its way into this report. “I was able to repair the communications equipment to the point where sufficient signal strength was obtained to summon assistance,” he said. 

“Most laudable, General. You and Ren appear to have developed a more effective teamwork than you have hitherto managed. I could wish that you had been as efficient previously.”

Just for a moment Hux lost the edges of control, and he could _see_ Snoke feeling, or hearing, the flicker of difference: the lashless eyes widened slightly, the hands closed on the arms of his chair. It had just been a slip, a tiny slip, but it had been there, and that meant that Snoke knew something _was being hidden_ , that he was making an effort to hide it. Keeping the numbers and the music up, Hux searched frantically for something to show Snoke as an explanation, an excuse, for the anomaly. He wasn’t sure where the answer came from, but it came--blessedly, entirely, rising to the surface of his mind fully-formed, and he let his amateurish control slip again--this time on purpose--allowing Snoke to see it: _resentment and jealousy for his lost command, for the_ Finalizer, _for Starkiller_. 

Snoke’s eyes widened again, and then narrowed, and the twisted mouth curled further in a smile; he hissed out a sigh, as if having just tasted something very, very sweet. “In time,” he said, “you will come to appreciate the values of your new vessel, General. That will be all, for now.”

Hux saluted, clicked his heels. By now he was expecting the last word, and it came when he was halfway to the door of Snoke’s audience chamber: “You are to be congratulated, as well, on your assiduous devotion to mental arithmetic. A most virtuous exercise.”

“Sir,” he said, hanging on to the numbers and the notes, hanging on hard, with the mental equivalent of both hands and his teeth. 

“You may go,” said Snoke, and this time Hux made it to the exit without further interruption. His mind felt...bruised, or possibly _stirred_ , as if Snoke’s thumb had really been mixing things up in there, and he was beginning to have sliding sparkles across the left side of his visual field, but it could have been worse. It could, he thought, remembering Ren in the red darkness, lying absolutely still and pressing his fingers to his face in a protective cage to stop his head from bursting, have been a great deal worse. 

~

In fact it was worse, considerably, by the time Captain Phasma caught up with him an hour or so later. He was busy trying to focus on reports from the people in charge of reprovisioning the _Dark Heart_ and _not_ thinking about what Snoke might be doing to Ren, right now, at this very moment, or what exactly it was that Snoke had done to _him_ , and when he looked up from his datapad he wished to every last hell that her armor was not quite so highly polished. “What is it, Captain?”

“Sir,” she said, and the shiny helmet tilted. He couldn’t really feel much of that strange new situational-awareness he associated with the sensitization; couldn’t feel much of anything other than _sick_ , right now. 

Hux closed the datapad. “Well?” he asked. 

“Sir, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said, with an edge on the words. The other thing about very highly polished armor, other than the fact that it hurt to look at, was that he could see himself reflected in it--and wished he couldn’t. Even distorted and vague, he looked noticeably paler than usual, with bruised shadows under his eyes. He knew he’d lost weight by the looseness of his uniform, but hadn’t exactly spent much time staring at himself in a mirror just recently. _Damn_ , he thought. 

Phasma was still staring at him. “Captain,” he said, and she straightened up. 

“Yes, sir. I was wondering if I might have a word with you in private.”

Hux felt fractionally sicker. What now? Was there something new and exciting wrong with the universe, or had she just _guessed_ what was going on, and how much of it had she guessed, in which case what the bloody hells was he going to _do_ about it? 

Out loud he said “Of course,” and nodded to the _Dark Heart_ , sitting across the hangar under a swarm of maintenance technicians and droids. The nod sent a clang of pain through his head that felt almost solid, like a blade. _If I’m going to be like this after every meeting with Snoke from now on_ , he thought, _it were better the galaxy came to an end sooner rather than later_. The sheer exhaustion, the _insult_ of having to keep his thoughts contained, and having to constantly try to reposition everything to offer smokescreens and distractions while Snoke probed and poked and smiled that awful twisted smile, was so much worse than Hux had anticipated. 

They walked in step, as usual, without him having to think about it, and having her there meant that the series of people who approached with questions for him decided, one by one, that they could wait--and that was a small but present relief. When they got to his quarters aboard the ship, Hux motioned her into a chair and sat down, carefully, taking off his hat. 

“So,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s…” Phasma paused, and then reached up to take her helmet off, too. The short-cropped pale hair stood up the way it always did, and she ran her gauntleted hands through it, the way she always did, and Hux felt marginally less dreadful just for the familiarity: how many times had they talked, like this, on Starkiller, on the _Finalizer_ , back before everything changed? 

She was staring at him. “Sir, are you really all right?”

“I’ve got a headache,” he said. “What did you want to talk about?”

“It can wait,” she said, but didn’t look terribly sure of that. 

“Phasma,” he said. 

“...All right. It’s just...I have some concerns. About the way things have been managed.”

“About my leadership?” he inquired. 

“No.” It was almost too fast. “No. Not yours, sir.”

 _Careful,_ he told himself. _You can’t shield worth a damn at the moment and she can’t at all, so be very bloody careful._ “You waited until now to bring this up?”

“I’ve been...gathering information,” Phasma said. “Data. I didn’t wish to speak without being sure of my facts.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and wondered if Snoke could actually listen to them _and_ focus his attention on Ren at the same time, and decided that possibly there was enough space and rock between the hangar and Snoke’s audience chamber to attenuate the mindtouch even if the Supreme Leader weren’t busy--and, furthermore, that he’d swept this room himself on entering, and there wasn’t anything in here he did not know about. With the air of a man steeling himself to jump into very cold water, he took a deep breath and said “Go on.”

“There have been a number of recent command decisions resulting in unforeseen losses,” said Phasma. “More than usual. Casualty rates are higher than I have ever seen them; I have lost a good third of my own troops over the past several weeks, and I _do not lose my men_.”

He knew that. He knew that, because she was in many ways similar to him, and his cardinal rule regarding sending troops into battle was _having an acceptable confidence level that they would return_. That acceptable level was much, much higher for him, and for Phasma, than many other officers in the First Order’s military, and it was one of the reasons he had risen so rapidly to general rank. Hux did not lose men, and neither did Phasma, and having that taken away from them was...an insult.

He just nodded, but the look he gave her said as clearly as if he had spoken out loud _I know, and I agree._

She held his gaze a moment longer, and then nodded herself, and continued. “The loss of Starkiller, of course, being the most significant defeat. Based on the best information available, the decision to target the Ileenium system--rather than simply destroying the Resistance base--seems to have been shortsighted at best, but my personal analysis is that it was simply wrong.”

Hux stared at her. She hadn’t been there in Snoke’s holoproj chamber when that order was given, hadn’t listened to the Supreme Leader’s uncharacteristically convoluted reasoning, but the same master-caution warning that had been going off in Hux’s mind had apparently been going off in hers. He wasn’t--all that surprised, actually. Phasma had not gotten where she was by being unobservant. 

“The Resistance attack on Starkiller necessitated the deployment of a large number of seekers,” Phasma continued. “Which, as we have seen, often have difficulty distinguishing between enemy and friendly fighters.”

“I know,” Hux said, bleakly. “I gave that order myself. Collateral damage was unavoidable, at that stage of the proceedings.”

Phasma nodded. “Exactly. Which it shouldn’t have been. The Resistance attack _was not inevitable_ , in my view. At least at that time. I don’t doubt that they would have attempted some sort of retaliation following the destruction of the Hosnian system, but the fact that we were preparing to fire on their own system at that time prompted them to desperate measures.”

He had said as much to Ren: the thing was obvious. “An attack while we were charging the weapon meant that the oscillator was an obvious and logical target for their firepower. Had we not been almost fully charged when they destroyed it, the planetary grid would have been capable of containing the residual energy.” 

“Right, sir. Which leads me back to the motivation for those decisions.” Phasma ran her hands through her hair again, causing it to stick up in entirely different directions. The marks of where her helmet rested were printed on her skin like pillow-wrinkles. “I...it is entirely subjective, of course, but I have _felt_ \--for lack of a better word--that things have not been _right_ , for some little time before Starkiller, and ever since. The Supreme Leader’s focus is obsessive, but before now I have never felt that it was not...entirely rational.”

Hux shivered. “Yes,” he said, listening to his own blood thump in his ears. “I agree with your assessment of the situation. As does Lord Ren.”

That made her sit up. “Ren?”

“Yes. There have been...developments.” He pressed his gloved fingertips hard against the edges of his left eye socket, where the pain had sunk into the bone. His brain still felt _stirred_. “Several developments. But your concerns are shared, and for the reasons you have just described. And the Supreme Leader’s approach to dealing with Ren does not exactly reinstate confidence in his decision-making process; it brings to mind a child taking out its frustration on a disappointing toy.”

Phasma nodded, slowly, looking grim. “Ever since Starkiller,” she said, “it has felt as if the purpose of the First Order has been...disorganized. Cut loose and flapping. What you said at the rally, before the Hosnian system was destroyed, is what I have always understood to be the guiding principle behind everything we’ve worked for: to excise disorder and waste from the galaxy, to take control and bring law and rule and method to the systems struggling under the New Republic’s corruption. I do not see how demoting you to a puddle-jumper on a series of quests to find fragments of Jedi history is meant to advance that principle.”

Hux smiled despite himself. “I admit it’s nice to hear someone else say that,” he said. “This is a good ship, and I can’t say it has been all bad, but I am no longer entirely confident that the work I am doing is work that needs to be done; and that is...not an easy thing to consider.”

Phasma watched him. “There’s more, isn’t there, sir?”

“Yes. At the moment, it’s need-to-know only.”

She nodded, and again Hux felt that little wash of relief at not having to explain himself, of knowing that the deeper level of secrecy was safe with her. “So,” she said. “What do we do next?”

It was a huge, an astronomical question, and he wished he knew the answer. “What orders have you been given, now that you’ve escorted us here?”

“I’m waiting to hear. I don’t know what to expect, sir. I really don’t, and that is...also not an easy thing to consider. As I said, I have lost a third of my troopers to what I consider unnecessary engagements, and I am not anticipating receiving my next orders with any great satisfaction. I would like to know the reason behind sending my people out to die.”

“As would I,” said Hux, feeling the weight turning on his shoulders, grinding. “Rest assured, Captain, the moment that reason is vouchsafed to me I will let you know. I am not...content to remain passive, even if the way forward is unclear.”

She let out her breath in a faint sigh, and he could see the lines of her shoulders relax underneath the armor. It was slightly, but only slightly, comforting to him that he could offer her that much reassurance, even as the weight increased perceptibly; a little of her trust and her confidence in him seemed to offer a few ounces of new and needed strength to balance the responsibility.

“What I know, as of this moment, is this,” he said, and she straightened up again, shoulders back. “The Supreme Leader has a list of these objects, or pieces of intelligence, that he wishes to have located and brought to him. If Ren and I are still to be sent on these retrieval trips, it’s possible that I can request to have you and your troops detached to the _Dark Heart_ for the duration. Unless you’re to be reassigned to General Nield on the _Finalizer_ , in which case I’d take it as a kindness if you could keep an eye on my ship for me.”

That got her to smile. Hux was surprised to realize the smile made him feel considerably better, despite the headache; even that was finally beginning to loosen its grip. Actually being able to talk about this whole mess had been...refreshing, even if the weight of responsibility he carried had increased. And even if she didn’t know the worst of the secrets yet.

“Sir,” Phasma said, as if just realizing something. “You said Snoke’s method of dealing with Ren...leaves much to be desired. What exactly did you mean?”

“I don’t know exactly what it is he does to Ren,” Hux said, “but the last time it was incapacitating. It gives me a headache, but Ren was...very unwell indeed. That was just after Starkiller, when the Supreme Leader had quite a lot of displeasure saved up to convey; I don’t know how bad he’ll be this time, but I don’t think it will be enjoyable.”

Phasma’s mouth thinned. “I see,” she said. “If I can be of any service--”

“I’ll ask,” he said, and meant it. 

“Thank you, sir.” She took a deep breath, and got up, helmet under her arm. “If you’ll permit my saying so, you look exhausted.”

“I’ll be fine.” He would. The headache was letting go, and so was some of that _stirred_ , violated feeling. He had things to do, and Ren to try not to worry about, and frankly Hux’s own weariness was just below bilge-sanitation on his list of things he wanted to think about. Phasma gave him another long look, but just nodded and put the helmet on. “Let me know when you receive your new orders,” he added. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Yes, sir.” Through the helmet her voice was metallic. 

He got up to see her out, and when the door closed behind her leaned against it with his eyes shut, and made himself say the words the way a man might make himself swallow something vital but desperately bitter, words which he had not yet found the courage to say until this moment: _I am a traitor._

“I am a traitor,” he said, to the empty room, “and a conspirator to commit treason, and my life is forfeit if discovered.”

Oddly enough it felt somehow refreshing to have finally put this vast amorphous wrongness into syllables--refreshing and _final_. It was not so much that he had deliberately strayed from the path, abandoned the sanctioned way, than that the path itself had strayed and he continued on regardless; and now that parting of ways had been deliberately acknowledged and made real in the act of speaking the words themselves. The weight on his shoulders, in his chest, was of responsibilities that were now recognized and set, and true, and real. 

The very acknowledgment of that responsibility somehow seemed to make it not less heavy but more bearable, like having a pack’s heaviness properly balanced on his back. Hux felt it settle, become part of him; and he thought of his father’s cold blue bombardier’s eyes as if, for once, they did not matter; as if finally, with these words, he might have stepped beyond Brendol Hux’s reach, into space still unexplored, starfields unmapped, systems yet uncharted and unknown.


	6. Chapter 6

There was another formal dinner that evening, because of _course_ there was. If you had taken Hux aside and asked him earnestly in which, of all the possible occupations he could imagine, he would least enjoy spending the next few hours, near the top of the list would be _having to consume entirely too much mediocre food and even worse wine in the company of a large number of people you don’t particularly like (but must convincingly pretend otherwise)._

At least he didn’t have to make any speeches this time, and he was everlastingly grateful that the headache had receded to the point where it was no longer making him feel overwhelmingly sick, but even so it was a pretty grim internal struggle to make it through all four courses. 

As before, Ren was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Phasma, which Hux considered profoundly unfair; her level of command responsibility on Starkiller and the _Finalizer_ should absolutely have subjected her to this particular experience. There were other Captains present, after all. He wondered how the hells she’d managed to get out of it, and resolved to ask her at the next available opportunity.

General Nield, however, was very much in evidence, and had taken the time to have her uniform extremely well-tailored, and as Hux watched her down the table, accepting toasts, he wondered if she took the full available advantage of his ship’s corridors to _stalk_ properly. He could picture her with her own greatcoat slipped over her shoulders, long strides, head held high, and discovered with absolutely no surprise that he thought she probably looked damned good doing it. Part of him seethed a little, in a tired washed-out way, but mostly he was vaguely glad that the _Finalizer_ at least had the aesthetic presence the ship deserved in a commander. More importantly, he thought, Nield was competent, if unimaginative and also very newly elevated, and thus inexperienced with the complexity of this level of command. His people on the _Finalizer_ would be good enough, skilled and experienced and knowledgeable and also vitally _capable_ enough to support her, making up for the inevitable gaps. That, at least, he could partly be proud of. 

When he was released at last, Hux returned to the _Dark Heart_. He’d been offered accommodation in Snoke’s extensive suite of guest quarters, but if given a choice of being on or off board his ship it would be _on_ no matter what. His ship: his responsibility, his--albeit temporary--home. And it did feel a little bit like a home, now, with recent memories overlaid on the plain and utilitarian surroundings. He wasn’t entirely sure how he would define the term.

He spent a few tense careful minutes wondering if that miserable dinner did actually plan to make a return appearance, but eventually decided it wasn’t. As soon as he could, he proceeded to try and catch up on the day’s reports on his datapad, but found it was no use; he’d be reading a column of figures quite clearly and move to the next one and realize absolutely nothing from the previous column had remained in his head. It was as if his short-term memory had suddenly developed deflector shields against incoming information. The mental silence, now that he could not talk with Ren, was awful. The lack of that faint gold presence in the back of his mind was like a piece of himself removed, with the raw space where it had been exquisitely tender and vulnerable. 

He checked his chrono. Ren would almost certainly have done the same thing as him, elected to stay on the _Dark Heart_ rather than in the guest accommodation, but Hux wasn’t at all sure that after a marathon session with Snoke he would be able to make it all the way down here to Hangar 40 without assistance. He could remember the way the slightest movement had frozen Ren in what looked like agony, and with his own audience still raw and recent in his mind Hux did not doubt at all that it had _been_ agonizing. The...violation of the thing. The _intrusion_ of that prodding, seeking, insistent thumb had been almost as bad for Hux as the pain of it, and for Ren, with everything amplified…

The door chimed, softly. Hux got up, straightened his tunic, tried to look like someone who had not just been subjected to a formal dinner and reception, and palmed the lock open. 

And looked up, again. Not just up at one helmet but at two. 

Kylo Ren was standing perfectly still and steady, but there was a slightly alarming tension in every line and angle of his body. Captain Phasma stood apart from him, hands at her sides, but Hux knew her well enough to read the focused attention and concern in her own body language. 

He didn’t bother to ask questions, just stood aside for them to come in; and he noticed, with an awful kind of pang, that her hand had gone to Ren’s elbow a fraction of a second before he had stepped forward. And that Ren was moving with ever so slightly exaggerated care, as if the air itself was weighing very heavily on him, as if he were made out of thin-blown delicate glass. 

Hux closed the door behind them and pointed to the bunk. He wondered, in a sector of his mind that wasn’t laser-focused on the present situation, why Phasma had brought Ren to _his_ quarters, instead of Ren’s own, and a moment later the answer came: if there had been directions given, they had been Ren’s to give, and that therefore it was _here_ that Ren had wanted to be, in his extremity.

Phasma’s hand rested on Ren’s elbow, very lightly, but present, guiding, and when they reached the bunk Ren’s own hand went out, patting at the surfaces, before he sat down, and then--terribly, all at once, as if some motive force had been switched off, lay down, all the care and control and grace snapped out of him. He fumbled roughly for the catches of the mask and helmet, tore it off, dropping the whole thing on the floor with a _thunk_. It rocked back and forth, just once, and then lay still, black and empty. The first free breath he drew _screeched_ faintly in his throat and chest.

Hux looked Phasma in the helmet, and then--with another of those ghastly stepping-off-a-precipice decisions suddenly, critically, _completely_ made--crossed the room to take Ren’s hand in his. 

The long fingers closed around his own, too fast, hard, hard enough to hurt, and for a moment he was back on quite a different ship, all bright light and too much blood and worlds falling away beneath them; and then Ren’s grip eased a little out of pain back down into _need_. Which was almost worse. 

He held on, held on tight, as he had done once before, trying to say with the pressure of his own fingers _I’ve got you_ , not daring to think the words to him, and almost unconsciously playing something vague and soft in his head to hold back the pressure of his own thoughts against what must be a...bruised, a wounded mind.

Phasma did not exactly sigh, but Hux could read a kind of weary resignation in the set of her shoulders, and with it a tacit acknowledgment, and _acceptance_ \--and for a moment he could not breathe at all, so huge and intense was the force of his gratitude. When he had control back, he asked her, quietly, “What happened?”

“Nothing, sir,” she said, and paused, and now she did sigh. “Nothing public, I mean. I’m fairly sure that nobody even noticed anything was amiss.”

“What _happened_?” Hux repeated. 

“I...recalled what you had said earlier, sir, about the Supreme Leader.” The rest of the sentence was glass-clear, unsaid: _and what it is he does to Ren_. “I was...concerned. And took it upon myself to check on Lord Ren’s...status.” 

The pauses were not Phasma at all, and he thought after a moment that she must be finding all of this as difficult for her to fit into her head, into her world, as he had done--and she was having to do a lot of it all at once. A _lot_. Today had not been easy for any of them. “Thank you,” he said. 

Her helmet moved slightly in what looked like a negation, and then she reached up and took it off, and her face was just her ordinary face, one he knew as well as his own after all these years, but he had never seen quite that expression on those features. “I determined,” she said, carefully, “that he was...unwell, and offered my assistance.”

Hux looked down at the white, sweat-gleaming face half-covered by Ren’s other hand. As he watched, Ren swallowed, hard, his throat working, and the effort was visible when he said in chopped syllables: “I can’t see.”

Hux squeezed his hand tighter and was in the middle of sorting out all the possible _oh gods I need to call for medics right now_ responses when Ren added, “It passes. It always passes. Just. Right now. I can’t see.”

“As I said, I’m reasonably sure nobody noticed anything was unusual, or wrong,” Phasma said, standing awkwardly by the table, still several paces away. “We made the trip down here without interference. I would have--”

She had been going to say _I would have taken him to his own quarters, but he asked to come here_ , and Hux simply nodded, relieving her of the necessity of saying it out loud. “Thank you,” he said again. “I...just thank you. This is bad, but it isn’t exactly novel.”

“After Starkiller?”

“Yes.” He wished he could tell her about the only other time he’d seen Ren incapacitated, the _wrongness_ of the thing. “Later. I want to talk to you. Will you...can you…”

And now he wanted to say: will you keep this secret, will you keep this safe, because it is everything, it is fundamental--and he saw in her pale eyes, not so unlike his own, both weariness and understanding. And, wonderfully, _sympathy_. 

“The situation is code nineteen, sir,” she said, and Hux let out a breath he had not realized he’d been holding. There were eighteen levels of classification in the First Order’s intelligence division. Eighteen was more or less Snoke’s eyes only, as secret as secrets could be kept.

“Very good, Captain,” he said, and added, with his eyes, as best he could, _I owe you a great deal, and I will tell you things when this one is...stabilized. When I can leave him alone even for a few minutes._

It wasn’t mindtouch, it wasn’t voices in his head, or even a synesthetic awareness of communication, but Hux could swear Phasma understood it all, staring intently at him. After a long taut moment she nodded, once, and put her helmet back on, straightening up almost unconsciously into attention. “Sir,” she said, and turned on her heel, and let herself out. 

He looked down at Ren, curled on the bunk with one hand tight in his and the other pressed over his closed eyes, and for the first time in...a very long time indeed, began to feel the stirrings of something very much like cold and terrible fury. 

~

The next few hours were not anything Hux wished to remember with much clarity. As he had anticipated, Ren was sick, quite desperately so, for a long time; and Hux held him through it, held his head while the spasms clenched and squeezed him, bracing Ren with his own body. When it was finally over, Ren’s vision had begun to come back; and when Hux had dealt with the aftermath and returned with ice in a towel for his forehead, Ren could focus enough to track his face. 

The weight he had...accepted, assumed, earlier in the day was still new enough to rub Hux raw, and the way Ren looked up at him, eyes so hugely dilated only a thin ring of darkest brown had escaped the black, made that weight seem briefly beyond his strength to bear. Behind the soft ongoing shield of the nocturne he had been playing at low volume throughout this whole miserable business, he thought: _I can’t do this, it’s too big, it’s too much, I have the will but I haven’t the strength_ \--and then the other voice that was part of him but not entirely his, the one that lectured and insisted and nagged and sometimes helped and that which, finally, _finally_ he could recognize in a cold clear sudden flash, spoke up. Rather softly. It was his father’s voice, of course; but Hux had never heard his father sound like that. _One can always do--_

 _What one must,_ he told it. _Yes. I know._

It did not surprise Hux at all that his brain had assigned Brendol Hux’s voice to the part of himself which was responsible for the _you will not show weakness_ lecture duty. It was another piece slotted into place, somehow, in a much larger pattern, and as with Phasma’s unconscious trust and confidence in him had done, it seemed to slip him a little more strength. He held Ren’s hand tight in both of his, and looked down into the black holes of Ren’s eyes, holes into the darkness inside his head, and said out loud: “I’ve got you.”

“I know,” said Ren, rasping and hoarse from an acid-scoured throat, and drew Hux’s hand to his face. Hux curved his fingers gently to cup the angle of his cheekbone, cool and slick with sweat. “I know. That’s...why I asked to come here. And she knows, too.”

“Yes. I’m...I’m going to talk to her. But you’re more important right now.” Hux filed away _asked to come here_ , not _told her to take me here_ , to ache about later. 

“How am I--”

“Don’t argue,” he said firmly. “Not now. You need to rest.”

Ren showed zero signs of letting go of him. Hux had slept on two chairs, or curled in one chair, before now, so many times he didn’t want to think about it, and he absolutely did not want to...crowd Ren. Not now, not when he was worn so thin. But the fingers laced with his were immovable. 

“I need,” Ren said, and closed those alarming black eyes-- _shark’s eyes_ , Hux thought, and had no idea why--”I need you. Really.”

It sounded...factual. Simple and honest. “You do?” he said, hating the unnecessary repetition of the statement even as he said it.

“Yes. I need...I...it’s...what he does is something like...tearing you apart, unpeeling you all the way, and looking at what’s inside the folds and seams,” Ren said, his eyes still firmly shut. “And the aftereffects, as you have just seen, are both lingering and unpleasant. Very unpleasant. I’m extremely sorry.”

“Holy hells, don’t apologize to _me_ ,” Hux said, sharply--and then wished he hadn’t, because Ren actually winced hard enough that he might even have considered it a cringe. “--No, look, sorry, just tell me what you need. I’ll do it.”

“It is...difficult,” said Ren, still looking stricken, “to gather oneself afterwards. And it helps, I don’t know why and it isn’t something I’ve studied, but it helps to...not be alone.”

He thought of Snoke’s mental probing, that terrible groundless vertiginous _stirring_ , and clamped hard down on it just a little too late; Ren jerked as if he’d discharged a spark. 

“What was…” Ren said, blinking up at him. 

“My damned imagination,” Hux told him. “I don’t...understand why he does this to you, but it fits the bill of _an atrocity_ fairly neatly, to my way of thinking. Tell me what to do, Ren. What do you need?”

Ren absolutely did not need to know about his own interview with Snoke, was what Ren did not need, and he was careful with his control--which was beginning to seem less impossible, now, with practice, than merely very very difficult. The black eyes focused on his face--he could see it, tell that Ren was capable of focusing now--and then closed once more. “Hold me,” Ren said. “I need that. I need...grounding.”

“Are--” Hux began to ask, and then shook his head. “No. Stupid question. You wouldn’t say it if you weren’t sure. You’re going to need to budge over a bit, though; they did not design these bunks for two.”

Ren flickered the edges of a smile up at him, and--with obvious discomfort, which hurt Hux rather more than he had been prepared for--inched himself over on the narrow bunk. Hux reclaimed his hand from Ren’s grip, and went about the business of programming his unnecessary alarms, checking his door locks; he put the lights on the switch by the bunk, and took off his boots, lining them up evenly on the floor, and as carefully as he could crawled in behind Kylo Ren, and pulled the covers up over them. Each little moment felt like a tiny block he could set in a detailed row, to regard and consider afterward--and then that orderly vision shattered when Ren reached clumsily behind him and found Hux’s hand again, and tugged at it, pulling Hux’s arm over his side, around him. Holding him.

He could remember lying like this on Felthor, curled securely into the loose comma of Ren’s body, with the weight of Ren’s arm comfortingly heavy on his ribs; and the thought of gold heat inside all his misery, melting it away, _burning_ it away, leaving only a glowing center that was simply itself, came back to him. Ren was holding his captured hand close against his chest. It felt, strangely, illogically, undeniably, as if the universe itself were suddenly turning on that small point of contact, that one touch. 

_Hux?_

Even through the faint strains of the ongoing mental sonata he’d had playing all this time, he heard it, and wondered if Snoke could hear it too, through the space and stone and metal separating them. Still: _Yes?_

There was a definite sense of something almost, but not quite, being said; and then Ren relaxed against his chest, still holding Hux’s hand firmly in place, and Hux said again--in acknowledgment, or reassurance-- _Yes_.

After that Ren slept. Hux could feel it, the slackening of all the remaining tension when sleep claimed him; and a little after that, his head finally quiet, he slept too. 

 

~

“It can’t go on,” he said to Phasma, the next day, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. “I’m no neurologist, but I cannot imagine that stress that intense doesn’t leave some physical damage.”

“Has it always been this bad?” she asked. It was midmorning; taking an actual break was novel for both of them, but well within the limits of expected behavior. They were once more in his quarters, which offered absolutely no evidence of the previous evening’s happenings. The bunk was perfectly made, as always. He had woken in the early, early morning to find himself alone, and was both glad and sorry for it; Ren had apparently slipped out to his own quarters, sufficiently recovered to move.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s almost the worst part of it; I don’t know if this is how it’s always been, and I simply didn’t realize, or notice, before now. To think that that’s been going on every single time we’ve met with him, and I had no idea...” Hux shrugged. He wasn’t going to introduce the topic of his own Force-sensitization; she’d had more than enough to deal with in much too short a time, and perhaps, he hoped to any god that happened to be listening, it might never need to be mentioned. 

It had occurred to him that she had undoubtedly seen things like his...personal attachment...to Ren before now; she’d been in the service for years and years, after all. _He’d_ seen it, for that matter, in the Academy and thereafter, and if the individual in question reported to him and was in a position where it was likely to compromise their efficiency or performance level or decision-making capability, he’d had a quiet word with them. Mostly that had sufficed. He thought, now, of those people, of the stricken expressions that developed into gratitude--horror at having been discovered, relief at having not been officially reported, _yet_ \--and felt approximately a thousand years old. 

“It doesn’t seem…” Phasma trailed off, looking irritable, and set down her own coffee mug. “I don’t understand the Force thing, I never have, it’s not my job or my business, but it doesn’t seem _constructive_. If one of my people performs below expectations I don’t spend the afternoon beating them senseless, I administer appropriate discipline and make a note in their record.”

Hux nodded. “Exactly. I think the Supreme Leader’s concept of _appropriate discipline_ may be the issue here. I find it--and this is, of course, only my personal opinion--somewhat disproportionate.”

“I concur,” said Phasma. “My assessment of the situation--”

“--’is that it is suboptimal, and requires adjustment’,” he finished for her, with the edges of a smile. 

A million years ago when he and Phasma had first been assigned to the same post, when Starkiller had yet been nothing more than plans and unimaginable ambition, he’d been overseeing sim-scene training sessions. One of them had ended in what, at the time, had been laughably, impossibly complete and utter chaos and defeat, and when the lights were brought back up and the officer commanding the troops in the sim was questioned about his assessment of what had gone wrong, he had said it quite seriously: _the situation is suboptimal and requires adjustment_. Phasma and Hux had looked at one another, helmet to poker-face, both trying extremely hard not to laugh, and ever since it had been a sort of joke between them, possibly the closest thing to an in-joke Hux’s world could accommodate. Since then, of course, that sim-scene catastrophe had been eclipsed by the reality of Starkiller; but the joke was still funny, in a bleak and black-edged kind of way. “Well,” he said, “you’re not wrong.”

“But what are we going to _do_ about it, sir?” she asked, and Hux rubbed at his temples with gloved fingertips and tried to think of anything to tell her, and had to settle for the truth. 

“I wish I knew.” He wasn’t looking at her, but he could feel the little disappointed slump, just for a moment, before she controlled it. “I wish I knew,” Hux repeated, and then, as it had before in Snoke’s chamber, the answer-- _an_ answer--rose from some unknowable mental depth, like a whale broaching suddenly and smoothly in its hugeness. Even as the shape of it began to register, Hux sat up straight, hands still pressed to his temples, trying to find the obvious flaw.

“Sir?” said Phasma. He could feel her staring at him, but the shape of the idea was still forming, still solidifying, and he just took one hand from his face and waved her impatiently into silence. Unlike Ren, she actually obeyed; and a moment later Hux had enough of it to describe. 

“You and I,” he said, leaning back a little, letting go of some of the concentration, “are not the only clever people in this military force. By far. I would wager, and I do not wager lightly, that there are quite a few other servants of the First Order who would wish to serve the First Order, and not the personal direction of its Supreme Leader, if given the choice.”

“Sir,” said Phasma again, and this time it wasn’t a question, but an affirmation. 

“Also: the First Order rose from the shards of the Empire. But those shards which were _not_ incorporated did not cease to exist when the Order came into being. Nor did the ruling families, the dynasties, associated with them. Or the influence and vast, branching networks of contacts those houses employed. They were diminished when Snoke rose to power; they lost a great deal by his ascension; but they are still in existence, and they have long memories.”

She didn’t speak, but leaned closer, pale eyes intent on his, waiting for the rest of it. 

“And those families,” Hux continued, as the sheer size of the realization continued to make itself clear to him, the breaching whale-back going on and _on_ , “the remains of the Imperial aristocracy who once moved in the very highest circles of political and social influence, have little reason to love Supreme Leader Snoke. Grudges held at that level are not to be underestimated.” 

He shivered, feeling hot and cold at once, space-black snow and gold fire, heat and chill chasing one another through the pathways of his body, the canals of his bones. “I believe,” he said, more slowly, “that it would be worth the effort to find out what, for example, the remaining members of the house of Tarkin might have to say on the subject.”

“They’re still on Eriadu, sir?” she said.

“As far as I know, yes. Verify that, first, and then find out for me, Captain, everything of archaeological interest about Eriadu and its neighboring systems. Find out, for example, if there is likely to be a particularly appealing Jedi- or Sith-associated artifact located on any of them, of sufficient power to make it worth Snoke’s while to send us out that way.” The Tarkin family had held no particular fondness for his father, but Hux was fairly sure the name would grant him at least a brief audience, if he could get himself that far. The logistical details could wait a little.

Phasma drew a long breath, and smiled. Properly smiled. Hux couldn’t help smiling back. “I don’t have to tell you--” he began.

“Level nineteen, sir,” she said. _Gods_ , Hux thought to himself, hardly even aware he’d been playing mental background music faintly this whole time, _it is so_ good _to have colleagues one can trust, not to have to carry everything alone, how did I forget that in so short a time?_

“Very good, Captain,” he said, meaning the words on several levels. Phasma nodded. 

“If you have no further need of me, sir,” she said, and her face was back to regulation blankness, a blankness he now _knew_ was there even when she had the helmet on, “I will return to my duties.”

“Carry on,” Hux told her. “Thank you, Captain. Your input has been of extreme value.”

This time when the door closed behind her he merely leaned back in the chair and clasped his hands behind his head and pushed the mental Novotai up several volume levels, and let himself _think_.


	7. Chapter 7

They were two days out of Snoke’s base, on their way to Eriadu--or, officially, to the nearby Narda system, to which one half of a semi-mythological Force-sensitive something-or-other had been traced: Hux wasn’t entirely clear on the details and didn’t much wish to be. The fact that it was there, or supposedly there, gave him the excuse he needed to visit this particular sector of the Outer Rim. 

Ren had been...more than usually saturnine and withdrawn. He had not made any mention of the business back on the asteroid, and Hux had honestly been too busy doing his job to engage in meaningful interpersonal conversations. He had been… _very_ tired, for too long, more tired than he’d realized, and the past nights he had slept profoundly and without dreams, falling into it as easily as dark water as soon as his head hit the pillows; but even in that heavy quiet sleep it took one personal-comm chime only to bring him all the way awake. 

He leaned up on his elbow, reached out in the darkness for the little flat box, wondering what time it was. The chime had been the particular sequence he’d programmed to Phasma’s own personal frequency. “Yes?” he said, pleased that he only sounded a _little_ bleary. 

_”I’m sorry to wake you, sir,”_ she said, and Hux could hear something crackling and crashing in the background, and sat up straight.

“What the hells is going on?” he demanded, reaching over to turn on the light. Ah. Zero two hundred hours, according to the chrono. Nice.

_”It’s Lord Ren, sir. Not--not as before. He is apparently very displeased. With something.”_ Phasma paused, and now Hux could identify the noises in the background as the ones expensive equipment made when being hacked to pieces with an incredibly stupid lightsaber. _”I’m afraid he’s refusing to speak to me, sir, and I don’t know what’s wrong. We’re on Deck C, near the secondary inertial damper arrays. Could you--”_

He was already out of bed. “I’m on my way,” he told her, and thumbed the comm off. He hadn’t tried to talk to Ren via mindtouch since the appalling night on Snoke’s base, almost sure that Ren’s mental bruising would make his own clumsy attempts at conversation painful; and the fact that Ren hadn’t contacted him, either, lent more credence to this theory. Was this more Snoke? Was there some kind of...delayed reaction he’d programmed into Ren, and what, in actuality, could Hux _do_ if Ren really was beyond reason?

_I’ll think of something_ , he told himself, stamping his feet into his boots and pulling his coat on over his official-issue grey pajamas: the First Order did not run to quilted dressing-gowns. _I’ll think of something fast._

On the _Finalizer_ , Kylo Ren’s tantrums had been expensive, but not necessarily dangerous: a console here or there could be bypassed easily. On a _Dissident_ -class, it was entirely possible that he could chop a hole through the damn _hull_ , or damage or destroy vital parts of the ECS, or the reactor shielding, and then they would be spending the rest of the evening--as well as the rest of eternity--as an expanding cloud of ionized molecules. The secondary inertial dampers themselves weren’t required for the continued survival of all on board, but they were located pretty close to some systems that _were_ , and Hux _hurried_. 

He could hear Ren long before he turned the corner and saw them. The entire side of one bulkhead halfway down the corridor was nothing more than glowing slag, sparks and debris flying everywhere with Ren’s furious and inefficient unbalanced swings. The saber’s blades hummed and crackled over both Ren’s yelling and the sound of expensive components dying a nasty death. There had once been a display console on that bulkhead; there was no longer.

Phasma was standing at a...relatively safe distance, every line of her body tense and unhappy, and she turned to see Hux with obvious relief. “He’s been doing this for...a good five minutes straight,” she told him, over the background din. “When I got closer, he appeared to be considering turning that thing on me, so I retreated and contacted you instead.”

“Good,” Hux said, hot anger tight in his chest, tighter than the alarmed concern that went with it. “I’ll handle the situation from here, Captain. Thank you very much. I--”

He’d been going to say something along the lines of _I’m sorry you have to put up with this_ , but there wasn’t time and generals absolutely didn’t say that sort of thing to captains, and anyway he was pretty sure that Phasma understood without the words. She just nodded, with a salute, and made a hasty but still regulation retreat. Hux turned back to the black-and-red figure in its flailing rage, and yelled “ _Ren!_ ”

The effect was immediate. Ren froze, mid-slash, and then the point of the saber slowly drooped down to point at the floor, lurching back and forth as his shoulders heaved, panting. The sound was very loud through his mask, a painful rasp.

“What the _fuck_ is going on?” Hux demanded, biting off each word. 

Instantly the saber came back up and scored another deep gouge in the wall. Gods, _was_ he going to be able to stop this? “ _Talk to me, Ren!_ What’s the matter? What in space is your _problem?_ ” 

Something about that seemed to enrage Ren even further, and he gripped the hilt with both hands and swung it so hard that the blade bit clean through metal and plastic and insulation and kept on going back into the open air, pulling him off balance. He staggered, shutting it off awkwardly, staring at Hux. 

“You,” he ground out. “ _You_ are my problem.”

That felt like a physical blow, and Hux wasn’t sure Ren hadn’t actually just reached out with the Force and struck him: it hurt, hard and dull in his chest. “What do you mean?” he asked, after a few moments. “What have I done to you?”

“Done _to me?_ ” Ren repeated, as if Hux had said something completely ridiculous. 

Everything about this was ridiculous. Hux was abruptly, miserably, tired and cold, and pulled the coat tighter around himself. “Yes,” he said. “What in the thirty-four _hells_ did I do to make you so _completely fucking furious_ that you spend what’s now been probably ten straight minutes trying to destroy this spacecraft’s infrastructure? Do you realize if you tried this stunt about thirty feet further down this corridor on the other wall we would probably be on contingency-backup OMS thrust control right now? Or if you were a deck further down and a little way aft we’d quite probably all be dead, or trying to learn really fast how to breathe vacuum? Did any of that occur to you at any point in this sequence of events?”

Ren was staring at him through the mask. The hand holding the lightsaber slowly opened, and the hilt slithered through his fingers and hit the debris-strewn deck with a _clunk_ that seemed to echo for much longer than it should. 

Hux slumped a little, huddling into the coat. “Does that mean you’re done?”

Ren did a bit more staring, then slowly nodded. 

“Good. Come with me.” 

There was something almost worse about the silent staring than the active property destruction. Hux nodded down the corridor, and was appalled to see that Ren made no move to pick the saber up again, walking slowly away from it and the still-smoking hole he’d gouged into the _Dark Heart_ as if neither were of particular import. 

He said something unprintable under his breath and bent over to grab the damn thing himself. It was warm, now, still surprisingly heavy but warm, and he thought _no wonder, it’s just done a hell of a job of work._ The stink of burned insulation hung thick in the air.

Ren had stopped shuffling down the hall and was standing there, staring at him, tall and black and silent, and it was beginning to really bother Hux. “I’m taking you to your quarters,” he said, holding on to the saber’s hilt himself in case Ren decided he wasn’t done after all. 

On the way he summoned maintenance droids and ordered them to start working on the damage, and alerted the infrastructure officer on duty as to exactly why some of her instrument readouts had just gone crazy. They could probably repair most of it to functionality, if not to looking neat: that whole section of wall panel was going to need to be completely replaced, you couldn’t hope to patch that. And _still_ Ren said nothing. He might as well have been a droid himself for all the reaction he offered Hux. 

By the time they got to Ren’s quarters he was getting angry again out of sheer worry. “Sit down,” he said, and Ren sat. “Tell me what this is about.”

More silence, and Hux was just about to take a deep breath to start shouting again when Ren finally, _finally_ reached up to take the mask and helmet off. Underneath his hair lay plastered damply against his face with sweat. His eyes were too bright, dilated; the sharp-edged rim of each narrow ring of iris caught the light. 

Hux put the lightsaber’s hilt down on the table--trusting, now, that Ren wasn’t going to seize it, turn it on, and start all over again, possibly using him for target practice this time--and sat down facing him. “What did you mean, _I’m_ your problem? What did I do?”

“You didn’t,” Ren said, hoarsely, and tried without notable success to clear his throat. _He must have yelled half his voice away_ , Hux thought. _That probably hurts_. 

Ren tried again, not sounding much better: “You didn’t...tell me.”

“Tell you what, for gods’ sake?”

“You didn’t tell me,” Ren said, “that Snoke had done it to _you_ , too.”

For a moment Hux had no idea what he was talking about, and stared blankly at Ren. “Done what...oh. Oh. That.” _Shit_ , he thought. “It’s not important,” he said. “I didn’t do too badly, I think. Just slipped once, and I covered that up with something else, pretended I was just trying to hide my jealousy of Nield and losing the _Finalizer_ command. I don’t...think he got anything I was actually hiding.”

Ren was looking at him with an increasingly terrible expression, a kind of miserable shocked hurt and horror all mixed up together. “What?” Hux demanded. “What did I do wrong?”

The expression cracked for a moment and let in astonishment. “You’re...seriously asking me what _you_ did _wrong?_ ”

“Ren, for the sake of all space and every last one of the hells,” he said, shoving both hands through his hair, aware of the incongruity of his coat and boots and sleepwear, “ _stop being fucking cryptic_ and tell me _what’s going on_ , because I don’t have this page in the briefing notes. Why are you so upset?”

There went _incredulity_ into the mix. Ren stared at him for a moment longer, and then covered his face with both hands. “I’m _upset_ ,” he said, enunciating with deliberate clarity despite the hoarseness, “because _you_ apparently had to undergo a type of interrogation for which you were by no means even half-prepared, which is extremely unpleasant even for someone with actual experience withstanding that form of invasive mental manipulation, _as you have seen_ , and you did not see fit to tell _me_ that this had happened.”

That was rather more words than he’d gotten from Ren all night, and Hux blinked at him. 

“It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I mean...really, orders of magnitude less bad than yours. I just had a moderately nasty headache for a couple of hours.” _Damn, damn, damn_ , he thought, _who else knew about it?_ “Anyway, what would I have said? ‘Oh, Ren, by the way, Snoke stuck his thumb into my brain and stirred it around for a bit, but I don’t think he pulled out any plums’?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ren snapped. “I need to _know_ these things.”

“Why--” Now it was Hux’s turn to press his hands to his face, leaning the heels of his palms against his closed eyes. “...So you’d know what I told him, of course. To keep the story straight. I can’t believe that didn’t even occur to me. I’m sorry.” A natural at subterfuge he was _not_.

“ _Hux_ ,” said Ren, and the tone made Hux take his hands away again and blink at him. “That’s _not_ it at all. It’s...look, I can’t...say this. I’m not...I don’t know how. I don’t know the words.”

“Then don’t _use_ words,” Hux said. 

“I can’t--” Ren made a small but eloquent little gesture from his forehead to Hux’s. 

“Yes, I know, I thought it was probably still hurting you, so I didn’t try--”

“Still hurting--” _me?_ Ren was suddenly there, entirely there, inside his mind, where Hux had missed him so miserably badly for _days_ now. The shock of it dazzled him for a moment, and then he took his own clumsy blocks away and reached out in return, feeling himself grabbed and held: the relief was like...oh, putting on the coat again, after days and days of shivering. _I didn’t want to hurt_ you _, you complete moron,_ Ren continued, _I knew you were exhausted and then when Phasma told me about Snoke--_

_Phasma told you?_ Hux demanded. 

_I don’t think she knew you’d mind,_ Ren said, but there was such _gladness_ to have him back, such sheer honest relief rising up inside the mindtouch, that Hux couldn’t spare much thought for Phasma. 

_So all this time,_ he thought. _All this time you thought I was...and I thought you...oh, hells. I’m sorry._

_So am I_ , said Ren, and his mental voice warmed Hux all over. Warmed, and more. 

_We’re...terrible at this_ , he thought, unaware that he was staring into Ren’s eyes with a very silly expression on his face. 

_We are the worst,_ Ren agreed. _I’ve been--tiptoeing around, stopping myself from--_

The thought lost the shape of words, became just feeling: how anxious he’d been, how unsure, and just recently how absolutely miserably furious that Snoke should have done such a thing to _Hux_ , it was unthinkable, it was unspeakable--

\--Hux could feel it beginning to intensify back into anger, and sent, instead, his own concern and reluctance to try touching Ren’s mind after what he’d just gone through, how much he’d missed everything about it, missed this, missed _him_ \--

_You missed me?_ He still sounded--and felt--honestly surprised, and Hux wanted to shake him. Abruptly, wanted rather a lot more than that. 

_Of-- oh, hells, you really are an idiot, Ren,_ he said. _Lock the door. You can do that with your brain, right?_

The faint chime of the lock sounded. He shrugged out of the coat, let it drape over the chair’s back. _What--_ Ren started to ask, and then lost the rest of it when Hux grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet, and across to the bunk.

_We have approximately...three hours before I need to be anywhere,_ he said. _And among my other leadership capabilities I have excellent time-management skills, as well as the ability to prioritize._

_I...you...I…_ Ren faltered, sitting on the edge of the bunk and staring at him with eyes that now seemed entirely too bright for a different reason. He was smiling now, that odd smile that lit his whole face, changed him from minor into major key: a shadow passing off.

_Damn,_ said Hux, leaning closer, not warm now but hot, feeling the faint prickle of sweat stand out here and there on his skin. He stroked Ren’s hair away from his face. _I just realized something._

_What?_ Anxiety flickered through the rising gold of his mindtouch, and Hux sent a ripple of reassurance. 

_This only shuts you up if you’re talking_ out loud, he said, and took Ren’s face between his hands and leaned in to kiss him, hard. _Let’s see if it works the other way, as well._

~

The first time it had been inescapably awkward, exploratory, uncertain of each other, but the music had wrapped around them both and taken their self-consciousness away long enough for neither of them to mind that they weren’t very good at it; and in the end it had _been_ good, very good indeed, at least for a little while. This time he and Ren knew a little better how the other worked, and this time Hux did _not_ play anything particularly loudly in his mind; this time he wanted no distractions. They were both still half-high on surging and illogical emotions, anger, fear, desperate worry, desperate _need_ and _want_ , and that revelatory, sudden fall and collapse into relief and gladness had done little to smooth out those intense peaks of feeling. 

Now, as he and Ren wrapped around each other--still clumsy, still awkward, still learning, but Hux found with delight that he did not actually _mind_ being less than perfect at a thing, as long as Ren was just as imperfect; there was such strange and breathless joy in learning it together--he found that he was almost frightened by that intensity; and, eventually, as conscious thought dissolved in a flare of brilliant gold, the notes he heard in his mind were notes that _Ren_ was playing, not his own. 

It took him a while to connect thought to thought again, afterward. That same extraordinary lazy warmth and contentment suffused him--both of them, he knew, lying now with Ren’s head pillowed on his chest: it was as impossible _not_ to feel Ren’s broadcast satisfaction with this small fraction of the universe as it would be not to hear or feel a cat’s purr. 

He had not known it could be like this. Hux’s experience had been limited, and unimaginative, and after the same basic sexual experimentation that any bored 19-year-old in a military academy might be expected to attempt he had simply considered the concept of sex in general _uninteresting_. Of no particular importance to him. He was aware that this viewpoint was in the minority, but he also didn’t care very much: he had better things to worry about. 

Ren, on the other hand, he thought, had almost certainly been taught by first the Jedi and then Snoke that this entire aspect of existence was a snare for the soul and a distraction from the Force. Hux had gotten flickers of anxiety, of _no--shouldn’t--forbidden_ , from him, the first time, just at the beginning, but they hadn’t sounded very sure--and when he would have pulled away, _made_ himself stop, somehow, Ren had merely held on tighter. 

Hux could have quite contentedly lived out the rest of his days without giving the concept of desire, of _pleasure_ , a second thought--beyond the brief and businesslike private episodes he sometimes found useful when the stress was very high. Now that he had experienced it, even the beginnings of it--and he was aware they were still pretty much complete novices, which meant that it could only get _better_ \--he realized that life without this was a profoundly grey and dismal kind of prospect; that he would do almost anything to keep this. Almost anything at all.

Ren shifted a little against his chest, and he let that idea go and sank his fingers into the tumbled hair instead, which was much nicer to contemplate. Ren was heavy, and warm, and draped over him in such a way as to make movement largely impossible. In slightly less than an hour Hux would have to do something about that, but for right now it felt much too good to protest. 

_What was that, the music you were playing?_ he asked, gently stretching a lock of hair between his fingers and letting it curl back. _I was a little distracted at the time._

_Good_ , said Ren, sounding sleepy and entirely content. _It’s yours, actually, but I’m probably remembering it wrong. Part of one of the songs from that Mist Hunter opera._

_You’ve been listening to my music?_ Hux felt another little pulse of heat in his chest. 

_You have a lot of it to listen to,_ Ren said, which he had to concede was true. Then Ren drew a long, deep breath, and let it out in a sigh, rubbing his cheek against Hux’s chest. _You need to tell me, Hux. About Snoke._

He sighed, too, ruffling Ren’s hair. _It really wasn’t that bad. I just wish I was better at this smokescreen business. I don’t_ think _he got a look at anything important._

_That’s not the point. He should never have done it to you at all._

_He does it to you,_ Hux pointed out. _Which...I don’t understand, you completed the mission and brought him his Eye thing, and he_ still _did that to you? After a success?_

_I’m his_ apprentice _. Or I was; I’m not sure what I am just at the moment, but I’m closer to being his property than you are. It isn’t...it wasn’t always like that, anyway. Since Starkiller I think he no longer entirely trusts me to tell him things on my own, so he seems to go actively...looking for them._ Ren sounded more weary than angry, or hurt, or resentful, and Hux ached. He let his other hand, the one that wasn’t occupied with Ren’s hair, slip down to rest on his back, between the shoulderblades: a small, ineffective claim. 

_Is it...has he always been mind-probing me, too, and I just didn’t know until now?_ He needed to know. For some reason it didn’t seem tremendously incongruous to be having this conversation tangled naked in Kylo Ren’s bed: part of his mind could quite easily go on playing with Ren’s hair while a different part paid attention. Compartmentalization was a useful skill.

_I don’t know,_ Ren said, after a moment. _I wish I did, to be honest, but I don’t. I’ve seen him look at the top layers of your mind a few times when we were both in his presence, but I don’t...know what he’s done when it’s just been the two of you._ He propped his chin on Hux’s chest and looked at him through those ridiculous eyelashes. _Are you really all right?_

_At the moment I am very well indeed_ , Hux told him. _Look, what he did was...bad, and a lot more difficult than I had expected, but at least now I know what it’s like. A very little of what it’s like._

_You should never have had to experience it at all,_ Ren said. _Let me see?_

_If you must. And if you promise not to do anything dramatic afterward._

Ren made a face at him, and then kissed his chest. _For you I will promise._

He meant it, Hux thought, or at least _Ren_ thought he meant it, which was probably good enough; and so he carefully uncovered the memory of that session with Snoke, and let Ren see. 

Almost immediately all the gold complacent pleasure drained out of his mindtouch, and Hux could tell it was an effort for him to stay calm as he examined the conversation, the remembered sensations. At least it was a relatively brief memory, and Ren read it through at least half again as fast as it had really happened, so it did not take very long before he drew back and let Hux put the lid back on that particular storage locker. 

_Are…_ Hux began. _Are you…_

_Am I going to go and destroy more of your ship in uncontrollable fury?_ Ren finished for him, and settled down again with his cheek pillowed on Hux’s chest. The knobs of his spine felt absurdly vulnerable beneath Hux’s fingers. _No. I don’t think so, anyway. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t...the systems...that wasn’t intentional._

_I know._ He stroked Ren’s hair, running his fingers through it gently, over and over. Slowly a little of the gold warmth began to return. _Don’t do it again, though. This ship is too small for that sort of display._

_I’ll keep that in mind,_ said Ren, with another sigh, and Hux could feel him assimilating the new information about Snoke, wrapping it up and storing it away for contemplation. _I need to think about this, all the ramifications of it, but at least for now we’re well away from him. That feels nice._

_Yes,_ Hux agreed. _Yes it does._

_How much time have we got before you have to go to work?_

_You have to go to work too,_ Hux pointed out. _You’re supposed to be finding the Janus Diadem or Crown or whatever it is, while I talk to Tarkins._

_I have a much better job than you, this time._

_Don’t get eaten by anything, without me there to protect you. --Anyway, I’m much better at diplomacy than I am at bushwhacking. It is a logical division of labor. And only about fifteen minutes, I’m afraid._

_Damn_ , said Ren, and then worked his way up the bed like a large ungainly inchworm until he could kiss Hux properly, which he proceeded to do; and Hux had seldom found his innate sense of time measurement such an incredibly wearisome burden. 

 

~

Two hours later Kylo Ren’s personal shuttle, which was just their second _Lambda_ -class hastily painted black in order to look ominous, was standing ready to take off for Narda. Ren was already on board, out of sight, and Hux stood in the _Dark Heart_ ’s hangar/docking bay staring out at almost the entirety of the ship’s complement. Phasma, gleaming, stood several paces to his side, and he could feel the reassuring solidity of her presence even when he wasn’t looking at her. 

He had done this sort of thing so many times by now that he could give speeches like this in his sleep, but it was strange to look out over the faces turned up to him and realize that he could recognize the majority of them by name. The _Dark Heart_ was small enough, Hux thought, a little surprised by the revelation, that he had probably personally spoken to almost every person on board in the time since he took command, and absolutely all of the droids. 

On the _Finalizer_ that had been frankly impossible, and he’d had to rely on PA systems and video feeds to transmit his message throughout the vast length and breadth of the ship. Right now he merely had to put a little effort into projecting his voice, because they were all so quiet. Watching him, looking up at him. Expectant. 

“To many of you,” he began, “these assignments on the Outer Rim may feel insignificant. Our progression towards the First Order’s goals – towards creating in this galaxy a lasting and complete submission to disciplined, lawful rule – might seem unaffected or even led astray by our current tasks. But I believe – and I have learned -- that there _is_ no mission that is insignificant.”

Silence. Expectant faces. Hux was mildly surprised that they hadn’t started muttering, or looking at their datapads in the back of the group. “Resource management,” he continued, feeling a little better for the focused attention, “is key to the successful prosecution of any military endeavor, and resource management depends entirely on small and unglamorous and unexciting jobs. We could not have built...the things we have built...were it not for the hard and rigorous and seemingly unimportant work of thousands upon thousands of dedicated individuals who believe in and who serve the Order. An army cannot march without logistics.”

He… _had_ them, Hux saw, still slightly surprised. Had them as surely as he’d had the massed cohorts on Starkiller, at what he had considered to be the moment of his personal apotheosis. These people had very little reason to care much what he said, one way or another: he had scarcely covered himself with glory so far on this assignment, but they were hanging on his words, and that gave Hux a fraction more strength, a fraction more force. He stood up straighter.

“And perhaps our arrival in this particular sector may not appear so very interesting or of much use, in itself. But what we do here is _part of a greater whole_. The _Dark Heart_ ’s task is necessary to the greater functioning of the Order. What some of you will accomplish today – and what some of you have already accomplished on the planetoids we’ve visited – is not only of use: it is _vital_ to our larger goal. That goal would be impossible without each of your contributions.”

He stepped back from the edge of the platform and nodded to Phasma--and was surprised, genuinely surprised, when they applauded. And it wasn’t the awkward let’s-give-so-and-so-a-hand type of clapping: this was loud and enthusiastic and entirely unexpected, and Hux had to hide the edges of a smile. Phasma’s trust and confidence in him had both increased the weight of his responsibility and granted him a little extra strength with which to bear it; now he felt that same shift all over again as he looked out over the crowd. They trusted him, and that meant he would have to find a way to live up to that trust--but the fact that they _did_ trust him gave Hux a small and entirely welcome flood of confidence. 

He nodded again, to the crowd, and now Phasma did step forward: the clapping ceased, and she began to rattle out orders for the troopers who were to accompany Lord Ren on the mission to Narda. Hux walked slowly to his own shuttle, the white _Lambda_ they had taken to Kellan IV. It had been carefully cleaned, but not repainted, and the small dents and dings in the fuselage and wings from heavy use had deliberately not been smoothed out. He intended to look both earnest and determined, a man resourcefully making do with the not-quite-enough he was being given, and _who was entirely capable of doing better_ , given the chance. 

On the whole, Hux thought, it was shaping up to be a fairly decent day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit should go to byzantienne for consulting on Hux's little pep talk at the end of this one. :D


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much of this chapter's dialogue in the Tarkin scene is by byzantienne, who is brilliant.

~

The Tarkin compound on Eriadu--the _palace_ , actually, and in fact the entire planet -- had seen much better days. As Hux’s shuttle came in to land he was struck by the unexpected beauty of it, a kind of gorgeous decay; the formal gardens had been blurred by overgrowth, whole wings of the vast house closed up with blank-eyed rows of dead windows, what must once have been a topiary hedge now a sheer wall of dense and rippled yew. There was an ornamental lake facing the west front of the palace which lay flat and still and darkest green, like a dancing-floor of polished jade, scarcely shivering with the wash of his ship’s engines as they passed above. 

When the ramp hissed open the rich, humid air touched his face with a mingled scent of flowers and the sharper note of the evergreens forming the great house’s avenue. Hux had absolutely no doubt that they had been watched throughout the approach, and as he stepped down the ramp and looked around him he was conscious of being as much on stage as he had been aboard the _Dark Heart_. He looked up at the crumbling but still elegant facade of the house, and took a deep breath of that extraordinarily rich air -- air with more _air_ in it than he was used to, almost dizzying -- and walked forward, aware with every step of leaving one past behind and moving into something subtly new. 

~

He wasn’t sure if the Tarkin clan had married for bone structure, the way some families married for fecundity or to dilute a particular hereditary flaw, but every single member of the family he had personally encountered had had cheekbones like the edges of a hatchet. It looked better on some than others; one of the three Tarkins currently watching him had evidently won some genetic lottery, her blade-sharp bones balanced and proportioned and rounded into a kind of cold and beautiful symmetry. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the ears half-hidden by her complicated hairdo had been pointed at the tips. She was some form of cousin to the other two -- Wilhuff Tarkin’s only surviving sister, desiccated and grey-haired and sitting as rigidly upright as if her spine had been surgically fused, and her sulky youngest son, a few years younger than Hux himself but behaving like a teenager. 

It was the sister to whom Hux addressed himself. She must be nearing seventy, but the cold gaze was as colorless and clear as ice. 

They were sitting in a room of harmonious proportions that had, like the rest of the place, come down in the world. The heavy velvet hangings at the windows were dusty and faded, a richer red in the depths of each fold where sunlight had not eaten away the dye; the furniture was worn, the gilt beginning to come off, but the quality and workmanship was unmistakable. 

Hux sat neatly, with the calm stillness of confidence, and watched Letitia Calpurnia Tarkin watching him. Her hands were clasped on the knob of her walking-stick, thin baskets of bone heavy with rings, the knuckles misshapen and swollen with arthritis. 

The pleasantries had been completed, tea served -- clear pale-golden liquid that smelled evocatively of smoke -- and he could feel her attention all around him, the force of her not inconsiderable personality like a charge in the air. 

“So,” she said, at last, “to what do we actually owe the pleasure of your visit, General?”

“I have official business to attend to in this sector of the Outer Rim,” he said, “and would have been remiss not to pay my respects to your family, Lady Tarkin.”

“How nice,” she said, glass-clear and sharp. “Manners are so rare, in this fallen age.”

Hux smiled, briefly. “Even now the House of Tarkin stands as a reminder of the best of the old Empire.” 

He could feel that one go home: _even now_ , even in its present state of elegant decay. Across the room, the pale pointed cousin sat forward slightly, the jewels in her hairdo glittering. 

Lady Tarkin’s colorless eyes traveled from his face to the silver-edged cuff-title ribbons on his left sleeve, and back again. “Your father served the Empire well,” she said, after a moment. 

“It was his life, madam.” Hux let a tinge of emotion into his voice, and then took it out again. 

“It was so many lives,” she said. “So many. You lost a great many yourself, just recently, did you not?”

“Yes,” said Hux, inclining his head slightly. “It was...regrettable.”

Lady Tarkin’s son, who would have looked rather better lounging on the sofa with an air of aristocratic disdain if he had not had quite so many spots, sat up a little. “Is _that_ the party line these days?” he inquired.

Hux retained his expression, with a little effort. “There were decisions made,” he said delicately, “which were not under my control.”

“Would you have chosen differently?”

Lady Tarkin’s voice had not changed, but the room had gone clear and slow and very bright around Hux. He could hear his own heart echoing in his ears. “Yes, madam,” he said. “I believe that I would. I believe that, had he been there, my father would. For the sake of the future.”

“And yet you are here, General,” she said. Her eyes had narrowed, fixed on him: target lock. “In your perfect uniform and your shiny boots. What is it that you want, I wonder?”

“What any of us want,” he said, holding her gaze without visible effort. “To know that the work I am doing is work which needs to be done. There was greatness in the old Empire. There were flaws, and faults; but there was greatness, and there was _purpose_. The First Order has done much to recapture a version of that greatness, but without a clear and present purpose, there is...a growing threat of chaos.”

“Are you afraid of chaos, General?”

“No, madam. I am not afraid of it. I am _offended_ by it.”

Hux set his teacup down in its saucer with a single steady _clink_ , and in that moment knew he had her; not the other two, not yet, but he had Lady Tarkin, and she was the one who mattered. “Some respect is paid to the memory of Grand Moff Tarkin in the First Order. The commemorative insignia for the rank of Major bears the name of Tarkin. Did you know that, madam?”

Her eyes were _glacial_. “I did not, General. How interesting, that our name should live on in such a particular and specific way. As an armband, for a _Major_.” 

Hux had to admit he had never heard quite so much scathing disdain in so few words before; he wasn’t too shabby at the art himself, but right now he was in the presence of a master. He let himself glance around the gently decaying grandeur of the room, aware that she was watching him. 

“When the Empire fell,” he said, slowly, “it took a vast and ancient culture with it. But cultures do not _fall_ , Lady Tarkin, not entirely: some of the Empire survives, in altered form; some of it is lost forever; and some of it has...languished. Supreme Leader Snoke's rise to power preserved what Supreme Leader Snoke thought was worth preserving.”

“Tell us something we _don’t_ know,” said the son, who had been fidgeting. “You seem to be doing all right for yourself; did you come here just to dig up a lot of bad memories?”

“Cyril,” said his mother, like a whipcrack, and he subsided, color mantling his face. The other Tarkin, the lovely cousin, was eyeing Hux with a cool consideration he wasn’t entirely sure he liked. “My son lacks manners, General,” Letitia Calpurnia Tarkin continued. “But his point is not invalid. Where are you going with this?”

“As I said,” Hux replied, “I’m here to pay my respects. To a family instrumental in the success of the Empire. And to...shall we say, entertain conjecture of the potential prospect of a different future, one which more closely aligns with the soul and center of the Empire which both our families have served.”

“Snoke,” said the cousin. Lady Tarkin shot her a look, but she merely nodded to Hux. “He wants to unseat Snoke.”

Hearing it out loud somehow made the entire business a little bit more real, the way speaking the words -- _I am a traitor_ \-- had done, alone in his chamber on the _Dark Heart_. Hux thought, absurdly, of superstitions, mythology: _in this place, speaking a thing aloud makes it come true._ His heart thudded so noisily he thought they must be able to hear it across the room, but he kept his face completely straight and neutral; and inclined his head slightly to the cousin, as if he were not entirely sure what she meant but was far too polite to say so. 

“Is what Juliana says true?” Lady Tarkin demanded. Her hands had tightened on the knob of her walking-stick, the misshapen knuckles pale through the taut skin. Hux watched glints of light fall from the gems on her rings. 

“Let us say that I have determined, through observation, that the current trajectory of the First Order has...apparently diverged from its original purpose,” he said, smoothly. “That confidence in the current leadership has been broken. What happened on Starkiller should not have happened: that is the truth.”

“You blew up the entire Hosnian system,” said Cyril Tarkin, sulkiness forgotten for the moment. 

“We demonstrated the firepower of the First Order’s then-current achievement,” Hux said. “And in doing so erased the New Republic fleet, and the majority of its gathered -- and corrupt -- leadership. Starkiller is gone, but as a proof of concept it approaches perfection. We have done this. We can do it again, and more quickly and efficiently now that we have a better understanding of the challenges involved in construction.”

Lady Tarkin was staring at him. “Do you...propose to build another Starkiller?”

Hux spread his hands in a slight shrug. “Who knows, madam? It is not up to _me_ what the First Order decides to do.”

He let that hang. And could feel it, could _feel_ again that he had her, cupped in the palm of his hand. When she spoke again he had to stop himself from smiling. 

“And what if it were, General?” she asked, each word cut off like a lifeline. 

“If it were,” he said, slowly. “If it were: there are some changes I would institute. And refocus the intent and purpose of the First Order from this...pursuit of Skywalker...back to its original intention, to bring order to the galaxy. To control and administrate and govern, in order to minimize waste and maximize efficiency. And in doing so, to restore some of what has been broken. Memory, and relationship, and structure.”

Hux was conscious of skirting around the larger question, the one that went _if not Snoke, then who_ , because he was not at all sure he had an answer to it; but that could wait. That could wait until there was a more concrete answer to the question of _how_. 

The Tarkins’ silence stretched out, elastic, just a little bit too long. Then Letitia Tarkin smiled, very briefly. It was a little like being smiled at by a handful of knives. “You raise some interesting points, General,” she said. “Very interesting indeed. Have another cup of tea.”

It was very nice tea, clear and smoky, and Hux was content to allow the conversational caesura; he knew very well that it would be one of them who would pick it up again, and in doing so would further the cause more than if he were the one to resume the subject. He limited himself to complimenting Lady Tarkin on the quality of the service, eggshell-thin translucent Coruscant porcelain that was obviously very old and very valuable. And he was fairly sure Ren’s magnetization business was somehow _intensifying_ \-- or perhaps it was simply that the people in this room _felt_ things so very strongly that they were perceptible from several feet away, Force or no Force. 

He knew Juliana Tarkin was about to speak, just before she did so. Hux wondered if she had a title -- probably she was an Honorable, or something like that -- and thought, briefly, about what it must be like for someone who looked like that to _live_ here and have to watch the rest of the galaxy go by. 

“So,” she said, staring at Hux, “all of this is _exceedingly_ gratifying, isn’t it? That even Snoke’s own prize general has finally managed to perceive what has been abundantly clear to the rest of us for decades. I would congratulate you, sir, if the realization were not quite such an obvious one, and if it carried any actual weight. Talk,” she added, and Hux had to admit she did it _superbly_ , “is just talk.”

Cyril sat up on his sofa, ceasing to drape. “Treasonous talk, at that,” he said, animated. “How do we know you’re not trying to...draw us out, General? Secure some particularly damning phrase and scuttle back to your Supreme Leader, in case he might give you back your ship -- _everyone_ has heard about that, about who’s in charge of the _Finalizer_ now --”

“Do shut up, Cyril,” said his mother, ice crystallizing on the consonants. 

Hux gave a wry little shrug, his face under perfect control. “He has a point,” he said. “But I would draw your attention to the fact that we are...mutually committed. You could denounce me as well as I could denounce you.” 

He watched Lady Tarkin’s eyes narrow. “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “Very neatly done. What else can you offer us, aside from mutual entrapment?”

Now something in his mind moved faster, a starship’s sublight engines ramping up their power, taking up the load with a lovely clean sense of force and potential. Hux leaned forward slightly, holding her gaze. “If we succeed?” he said, with the slightest hint of emphasis on the we. “If we succeed: your House’s rightful place in the heart of the Imperial military, restored. The power and prestige and wealth that were taken from you, thirty years ago, returned. I want to work _with_ you.”

He could feel the others staring, but it was Letitia Calpurnia Tarkin he was focused on, his attention as sharp and intent as her own blade-edged intensity. “Fascinating,” she said, after a moment. “What else?”

Hux opened the throttle. “Open and well-regulated trade from this system to the heart of the galaxy,” he said. “Under Wilhuff Tarkin’s leadership Eriadu -- and this whole sector -- was a jewel in the Empire’s crown. If we restore order and good governance to the systems under our control, and eliminate the destructive waste of manpower, energy, and focus which are significantly limiting the progress of achieving that goal, your planet could be restored to its former status.”

He let that hang in the air for a moment, a turning jewel, and was not surprised when it was again Juliana who broke the silence. “You’re offering to give us back the...governorship. Of this sector.”

Hux spread his hands, looking tired but honest. “Why would I turn anywhere else? It is...or it should be...your family’s responsibility.” He was flying now, all engines to full ahead flank. 

“And what do _you_ want, in exchange for all this?” Lady Tarkin asked. 

Everything narrowed to this point. He took a deep breath, and said, smoothly, “Your support.” 

There was a beat. 

“...He wants the remains of our fleet, Mother,” said Cyril, demonstrating an unexpected clarity of perception. “Obviously.”

Lady Tarkin went on staring at Hux for a few moments longer, and then sighed; her hands on the jeweled knob of the walking-stick relaxed a little. “Well,” she said. “It isn’t as if they’re doing anything _useful_ parked in orbit with the moons.”

Cyril looked as if he wanted to protest a little further, but one of his mother’s hands reached out and settled on his shoulder, and he subsided. “The ships remain under our control, of course,” she continued. “But we can -- let us say _lend_ them to you. When you make your move.”

“You have my profound gratitude, Lady Tarkin,” Hux said, with complete honesty, and inclined his head. He was a little dizzy with the simple _enormity_ of the thought: _he had a fleet_. Even if the captains were all Tarkins -- which wouldn’t be a drawback, considering the family’s knack for strategy -- _he had a fleet_ , and what was merely a wild flicker of imagination had suddenly become a concrete possibility. “It will...take me some little time before I am in a position to use them, but when I do, I will use them _right_.”

That was a little closer to revealing his excitement than Hux had really wanted, but never mind. “I should hope so,” said Lady Tarkin. “I assume your presence here on-planet is explicable to Snoke, this time --”

“-- but further communication will need to be remote and encrypted,” Hux finished. “Precisely.” 

She nodded, and rose to her feet with effort, joints crackling. “I will provide you with secure codes,” she said, crisply, as if they had merely been discussing a business deal -- which, of course, this essentially _was_ , on a galactic scale. Hux was very much aware that he was in the presence of blood a great deal bluer than his own, and reflected that of course Lady Tarkin would think of security first, and in concrete and practical terms. He got up, tucking his hat under his arm, and a moment later so did Cyril and Juliana. 

“Thank you, madam,” said Hux, and was only a little surprised when Letitia Tarkin held out one of those stick-thin beringed hands in his direction. Her skin was dry, slightly warm, as he took her hand in his and bent to brush his lips very lightly over her knuckles, over the gems she wore; and when he straightened up again he had a very clear and powerful sense of the universe having _shifted_ ever so slightly, and settled down again into a very subtly different configuration. 

When he left the palace shortly afterward, he was moving carefully, because he felt on some absurd level that to tread too roughly might jar things back to the way they had once been; and the troopers aboard the shuttle had to repeat themselves a few times when they spoke to him, as if he were a very long way away indeed.

~

Later: hours later, back on the ship. He was sitting alone, in his quarters, with his eyes shut -- somehow just at the moment it felt rather as if the task of perceiving his surroundings, of processing that input, would have presented an unacceptable distraction from the business he was actually thinking about. It was...huge. It was huge because he _had ships_ , now. The Tarkin fleet was not huge, but the ships themselves were of the highest quality, if old, and it would not be too difficult, he thought, to bring them up to modern standards, and to arm them properly; not difficult at all. 

_He had a fleet_. Not _command of a First Order fleet_ , but one of his own.

He was _going to do this_ , because it could _be_ done. And still he was mentally skirting around the larger question, because there was not an answer to it, and that was something he would have to consider soon enough -- but not now. Now was for...exultation, at least a little of it, and for imagination, and letting himself think strategically in a way he had not been allowed to just lately.

Hux had spent his adult life considering politics as a thing that other people set up and he carried out, or at least carried out the logical conclusions thereof, but there was an extraordinary heady kind of satisfaction at this edge of things, that sense of pushing some vast ship’s engine thrust higher and higher in his mind, until he was flying, until he was _on_ the way he had been _on_ at the rally, when he had given the command to fire and his -- _their_ \-- lovely unthinkable incredible weapon had struck red fire into the sky and in an instant snuffed out _a whole system_ , unthinkable power, power beyond power, power of the universe itself --

At this point the door opened. Since it was keyed to only two people other than himself, and only one of those would ever dream of entering without knocking, Hux knew exactly who was standing over him: but he would have known anyway, lock or no lock. He realized that on some level he had felt Ren’s approach from halfway down the hall, even through the mental focus on his own most powerful memory. This...magnetization… _sensitization_ , he corrected himself, seemed to be strengthening with time. 

He hadn’t opened his eyes yet, staying perfectly still with his elbows on the chair’s arms and his fingers steepled. Then Ren dropped something heavy on the table, with a clatter, and Hux blinked and found himself staring at a battered circlet of dark metal half-wrapped in one of Ren’s black drapes. 

He looked up at Ren, who was visibly excited despite the mask--he was breathing fast, and the set of his body spoke as clearly to Hux as his face would have done, even if Hux hadn’t been able to more or less tell his hidden expression. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he inquired. 

Ren took off the mask, and the high color was there in his face, brushed on each cheekbone. “I thought you might like to see it,” he said, sitting down. Hux was conscious of his attention, the _intensity_ of it, like radiant heat. “The diadem.”

Hux leaned forward and picked up the artifact lying on the table. It was much heavier than it looked: a slightly flattened circle of black metal, shaped to fit a head, set with a dark-red stone that gleamed sullenly in the bright light of his quarters. The stone extended above the band, and was set slightly to one side of the center of the circlet, an imperfection that puzzled Hux until he thought a little harder and recalled the actual nature of this particular piece. It was only half of the complete object, wrought to fit together with another circlet, the way some wedding bands were designed to fit into one another. 

He examined the jewel more closely: it was set in an open-backed bezel, letting the light pass through it, and when he touched the smooth surface it felt oddly warm to his fingertip. “What is this?” he asked. 

“There are a lot of stories about where it came from. It’s supposed to be the bloodstone of a dragon, for example,” said Ren, still with that radiant intensity, an odd sense of _potential_ , like an electric charge. “Or the heart of a falling star, which it obviously isn’t. My guess is that it’s just a black ruby. Corundum, anyway.”

Hux looked up from the thing in his hands and was a little struck by just _how_...present Ren looked, how completely alive and engaging with the moment, none of his usual faintly condescending superiority visible at all. “Ren,” he said. 

“What?”

“What else is there?”

He was ever so slightly gratified to see Ren’s brows draw together, and then: _How did you know there was anything else?_

_I know you_ , said Hux, smiling. _Show me._

_That -- what you’re holding -- is the dark half of the diadem. The dark side. The part of it that was taken and kept hidden, venerated, by the Sith._

Hux watched as he reached into the black satchel he had set down on the floor beside his chair, and then involuntarily sat up straight as the thing in his own hands _heated up_ , as if a current were running through it. Ren’s black-gloved hand re-emerged wrapped around...the mirror image of what Hux was holding, swaddled in black cloth that was not opaque enough to conceal its brightness. Hux thought, briefly, _doesn’t it hurt you_ , and got a little ripple of amusement in return. 

“Yes,” Ren said, aloud. “It does. But some pain is worth it. This is the _other_ half. I am entirely sure you can work out its lineage.”

Slowly, almost dreamily, Hux held out the black crown, and Ren reached out to take it, offering the bright one in return. There was a moment, just a fraction of a moment when Hux held them both, and he gasped at the shock of it, the sudden thud of power running through him as some unthinkable circuit was closed; his heart juddered and trembled in his chest. Then it was over, and Ren held the black crown, and worried gold heat was all around him: _Are you all right? Did it…_

He got his breath back very quickly. _I’m fine, but what the hells_ was _that?_

In his hands the bright gold circlet of the other half of Ren’s find was warm, but not uncomfortably so. It was exactly the reverse of the first one, the metal rich yellow gold instead of dull black, and the stone was a profoundly deep blue rather than red: a sapphire, to match a ruby. He could picture exactly how they would fit together, gold and red, blue and black interlocking, and knew without having to be told that bringing them in direct contact would...result in a kind of criticality. 

_That was an intimation,_ Ren said. _A flicker of the power this thing can actually command. The light half of it has been thought to be lost for hundreds and hundreds of years, possibly even destroyed._

_This is what Snoke wants?_

_Yes._ Ren was turning the dark half round and round in his hands. _He knew this part was likely to be somewhere in the Narda system, which is why we are even here to begin with, but he did_ not _know that the other side had, somewhere along the line, been brought there and hidden away as well._

The blue stone was pleasant to touch, its smoothness round and satisfying, like an egg. In its depths a spark of deep-azure light burned. Hux looked from it to Ren. _And you aren’t going to tell him,_ he said, realizing it. 

_I’m not going to tell him._ And Ren smiled. _It can be kept...secret. Safe. Until the time has come to use it._

_How will you know?_

_We’ll know._ Ren set the dark half of the diadem down on the table. Hux could feel a sort of echo in the thing he held, as if it had been jolted slightly when its other half moved. He looked down at it, and then wrapped the black cloth carefully back up, mostly hiding the bright gold from view. It was a relief to set it down next to, but definitely not touching, the other. 

He found himself rubbing his hands together, as if he’d just put down something very, very hot, and a moment later Ren reached out to take them between his own black-gloved hands. _Relax_ , he said. _I know what I’m doing._

_Good_ , said Hux, letting himself enjoy the contact. _You’d better._

_I do._ Ren was still smiling. _So_ , he continued. _How was_ your _day at work?_

Hux half-closed his eyes, with a smile, and...let Ren see what had happened on Eriadu. The decaying grandeur of the Tarkin compound, that jade-green lake like a dancing floor, the rows of blind windows overgrown with ivy; Letitia Tarkin’s colorless eyes in that hatchet-sharp face, watching him. Watching him watch her. And the words they had exchanged. 

He could feel Ren’s attention change shape, change focus, as he saw what Hux was recalling. Fascination, at first, and then actual excitement, a kind of trembling fullness of the chest, a gathering intensity, and then it changed again into heat, into burning gold. His eyes met Hux’s, black crystal, brilliant, and Hux only just had time to realize what was about to happen before Ren took his face between both hands and kissed him so hard his ears rang. 

The mindtouch was incoherent, a swirl of brilliant light, but one thought came through clearly -- _you are amazing_ \-- and Hux gave himself up to it gladly: _We can do this._

_\-- we **will**_ , Ren thought, somewhere inside the tangle of heat and desire, and shortly afterward Hux temporarily ceased to be capable of using words at all.


	9. Chapter 9

There were very many reasons to prefer the command of a _reasonably_ -sized vessel over something the size of a city-state. Very many. Hux knew every single one of them.

Maneuverability, for example. Being able to give the order to come about and have the maneuver executed in a matter of minutes, rather than half a damn hour with the acceleration compensators having to do some work on the outlying regions of the ship to stop people being laminated to the walls by centrifugal force. And the fact that he knew all his officers by name, knew their particular quirks and strengths and weaknesses, was able to call on them individually based on that knowledge to answer a particular situation. And that doing the round of inspection himself was actually _possible_ , rather than largely symbolic. He _knew_ the _Dark Heart_ , knew every inch of her, the peculiarities and the habits and the way she yawed slightly under heavy sublight acceleration because the number-one engine thrust vectoring was a fraction out of true. He knew how to set the maneuvering thrusters to compensate for that yaw, and how much fuel this drew that should not be drawn, and how long it might take to have the engines properly balanced versus how much time he was willing to spend on Snoke’s asteroid at any given time. Hux knew his ship. He -- did not particularly _love_ the _Dark Heart_ , but he _respected_ her, and was confident in his grasp of her systems and how she would respond.

But on his own, in the dark, he missed his lovely shining sword of a mastership.

Long after Ren had left his quarters, he lay looking into the darkness, and thinking.

Hux had been the one to take the _Finalizer_ out on her shakedown cruise. So new that some of the consoles still sported their protective clear-plastic scrims, so new everything on board gave off that inimitable new-ship smell, so new nobody’s feet had worn down the floorplates or polished the keys of each input board with use or marred anything with little reminder-notes, she had been an achievement of which Hux could be proud despite having had nothing to do with her construction. He had been busy with the planning stages of Starkiller while Kuat-Entralla Engineering had been welding together the plates and spars that would become the _Finalizer_ , and his first introduction to her had taken his breath away -- even used as he was to enormity in scope, with his planet-sized weapon half-built.

_Yes, yes, all this is yours_ , they had not said -- but there was no need to say the words. Hux had spent several days simply walking around the length and breadth of his new charge and trust. Making himself familiar with where everything was, where everyone was, where and how the important transit paths lay and how they could be bypassed in emergency. He had spent three days’ free hours intently studying the _Finalizer_ ’s power reactor, settling into the back of his brain all the specs as well as where the controls and shields and emergency exits lay.

The maneuvering thing had taken some getting used to, which is why Hux had been careful to hold those drills in recognized clear space, where there was no danger at all of collision or impact. It had been embarrassing how badly he had calculated the first few maneuvers, but once that had sunk in he found it almost natural to think three or four moves ahead, when to begin to give the commands that would set the huge bulk of the _Finalizer_ in motion, so that by the time she had settled into her new position the target had placed itself directly in the range of her turbolaser batteries.

He had grown very quickly adept, too, at launching and directing the fighter wings, many more fighters than he’d ever had under his direct command before. It was playing at a much more sophisticated level, the game unchanged but the tactics perforce faster, more complex and anticipatory. After four weeks of putting the _Finalizer_ through her paces, Hux had been comfortably confident that he not only knew his ship and how she worked, but could use her to the best and most efficient effect -- and what wasn’t quite right yet, and needed to be adjusted in order to achieve peak functionality. 

When they returned to Snoke’s base he had had a list of things to adjust or repair or replace, and insisted on inspecting every major repair or replacement himself. And testing them, one by one, testing each improvement out in safe space to make sure the problems had been solved. A starship of this size and power was a superweapon in and of itself -- in fact, any starship was a weapon, used correctly -- and he knew that while he wasn’t as smooth or clever a commander as one might wish just yet, he still knew what he was doing, and he knew how to make his ship do what he wanted her to do.

He had cared deeply about the ship from the beginning, through that process of refinement and fine-tuning. But as time went by and the shape and limits and surfaces and structures of her quarters sank into his brain as just _ordinary background_ , familiar, comforting in that familiarity, he had found in himself a growing, hot, focused spark of pride. The _Finalizer_ was _his ship_. No matter how many commanders stood on that bridge and gave the orders, no matter who told the systems what to do, the _Finalizer_ had gone on her maiden voyage with Hux at the helm, and the _Finalizer_ was _his ship_.

He had grown so used to being able to work off frustration merely by _walking_ \-- or stalking, if he were to be bracingly honest with himself -- that he had resented being forced to visit the _Dark Heart’_ s tiny gym facility to wear himself out in pointless embarrassing sweaty activity where people could see him. On his own ship, all he had had to do was stalk. For miles. One circuit of the ship was about four miles in total, and at Hux’s fastest comfortable stalk this took him just about an hour. When he had not been able to sleep -- which was more often than he wanted to admit -- then, too, he had taken to the corridors. Greatcoat draped over his shoulders, datapad in hand, he had put his girdle round the _Finalizer_ through the very tiny hours. 

And while he moved through his ship, he could keep an eye on what was going on, exchange brief words with people as he passed, keep them all aware that no matter what hour of the day or night, General Hux was _always watching_. Always there. Not without mercy; but unforgiving of stupid error. Everyone was used to the fact that he might appear without warning, stalking past with the coat flaring out like a cloak with each step, pale eyes scanning everything for potential mistakes and -- if you were lucky -- passing on.

(Sometimes, rarely, he would pause and strike up a conversation with someone who was not at all used to speaking directly to general officers; he did it by asking short and pointed questions that were easy to answer, and let him judge both the actual situation and the crew member’s grasp thereof. Those individuals who had been subjected to this particular attention would tell their friends all about it in the ship’s canteens, trading personal accounts with the air of comrades who had shared a particularly harrowing experience.

_He asked me about the secondary coolant loop filters on the ventral laser batteries, like “are they still using those polymer filter beads that clump together under high-flow conditions,” and I said yes, and he just nodded and said “use the auxiliary compressed-air line to shake up the filter screen and loosen the packing, it’s a known flaw,” and went on sort of walking really hard down the hallway like he had places to be._

And: _yeah? that’s nothing, he asked ME about the loop leading to the pressurizer in the number-three steam-generation circuit, said it was important to watch the block-valve temp, you can blow the coolant out of the main circuit through the relief valve without knowing about it if you have trapped fluid in that U-bend, and like...how did he even know that, I flunked that test twice in training,_ and so on.)

Behold, as may unworthiness define: a little touch of Hux, in the night.

And now, alone and silent, in a different darkness, he let himself remember how that had felt. How _secure and good_ , like pulling on boots that fit tightly and well, it had been. How he had known, for sure, albeit briefly, that he was right where he belonged; and Starkiller had gone from plan to reality, and he had belonged there too, after so many years, but the _Finalizer_ had been the closest thing Hux had had to a home in lo these very many years; and it hurt, to think of his gorgeous flying city-state in the hands of someone else.

He wondered if Nield walked the corridors at night and talked to the engineers on the dark shift. Wondered if she took the time to touch the things that made her ship live and fight, if she had placed her gloved hands on the mountings of the three vast KDY engines, felt that vibration inside her bones; visited the hypermatter-annihilation reactor control center, shielded by a labyrinth of attenuating material, but still close enough to mean bright death if anything went wrong; if she had stood by the operators whose job it was to monitor this particular tiny locus of unthinkable destruction and stay awake through the long hours of their work shifts.

He wondered, too, if Nield knew what the reactor complex _smelled_ like, that peculiar acrid indescribable stink that was the result of the process powering their entire existence. Wondered if she knew about the galleys, how much water and power and consumables went into one day’s worth of cookery, and why it was practically impossible to make that cookery a) interesting and b) better than barely palatable. Wondered if she had visited the TIE hangars in the small hours, watched the mechanics at work, seen the tired camaraderie of the pilots in the ready-room -- at certain levels of alert, at least half the squadrons needed to be able to scramble in minutes, so the sleep schedule was carefully calculated to enable the pilots to actually be safely capable of flight.

(One of the sublight-propulsion engineering officers would only with difficulty be prevented from telling the story yet again, every time she got a couple beers in her, of how on the shakedown cruise General Hux had appeared behind her and said “Number Three’s not right,” and how she had looked up in miserable acknowledgment and said “Yes, sir, I’m working on it, sir,” and how he had just sighed and come around the railing leading down to their actual working consoles, and _stood beside her_ , actually right next to her, _General Hux right next to her_ , near enough to _touch_ , and leaned down to tap his gloved fingertips on her controls. “Our three mains, as you know, are KDY Destroyer ion powerplants,” he had said, “the same thing they used on the Imperial Star Destroyers. They’re good solid engines, the design is still used for a reason, but some of their components are fabricated of a particular alloy that isn’t quite as efficient at absorbing vibration as one might wish. Mostly this is not a problem, but --” and he had typed rapidly, past her, calling up specs on her console -- “when they’re installed into another ship than the ones they were originally designed for, one which is a different shape and size and behaves differently, without the necessary dampeners as part of the build, you can get this kind of harmonic, and it’s going to get worse if you keep burning that engine at full thrust. For right now, Lieutenant, have your people install some flexible shims between the reaction chambers and the mountings _here_ and _here_ , and don’t run number three above seventy percent; when we get back, I’ll have them overhaul the engine and install a proper dampening cradle on all three of them. I’ll keep this in mind; I won’t ask you, or any of the rest of your team, to push a not-right engine to dangerous levels.”

According to the lieutenant, he had even almost sort of smiled, for a fraction of a second. Like, it was possible that he _could_ smile. That was news that needed to be spread around the fleet.)

On the _Dark Heart_ , Hux closed his eyes and let his consciousness expand throughout this much, much smaller fiefdom, taking into account the systems and the people who kept them running, and being inescapably fond of them; but part of him still missed his beautiful pointed arrowhead of a flagship, his city-state with her miles of perfect corridor, her slick and glossy surfaces, _now more perfect because of the changes he had caused to be made_. He knew that Nield was a capable officer and would not damage his ship, would very probably command the _Finalizer_ perfectly efficiently; but he couldn’t stop thinking of _his people_ , all of his people, and how desperately he wanted to make that four-mile rapid stalk circuit and _check on all of them_ , make damned sure everything was working properly, and how much this might possibly never happen again, unless he and Ren and Phasma succeeded in their work.

When he finally did sleep, in the small hours, he did not dream; but one thought was there in his mind as he fell away from wakefulness, and it was still there in the morning: _We will do this, because it must be done._

~

The question was, of course, _how_. Or _who_. Because there was going to have to _be_ a who, to fill the hole left by Snoke -- and it would have to be someone they could trust, someone who could actually play the part and catch and _hold_ what structure remained, and who would, furthermore, be capable of listening and taking orders from the three of them, or at least from Hux himself. He supposed the orders would have to be phrased as _counsel_ , for the sake of propriety. 

Hux went on his morning rounds while he considered potential candidates, pushing away a brief and horrible vision of a new regime with a Tarkin for a figurehead. None of the other high-ranking families of the old Empire struck him as any more suitable, and probably a good deal less so. The problem with promoting somebody above yourself was that there were never any _guarantees_ that they wouldn’t turn around and bite you afterward, or get the kind of ideas that had prompted the removal of the old regime in the first place.

It was of course possible that _Ren_ could take Snoke’s place, but Hux wasn’t sure of the wisdom of that choice. He happened to be stalking down the corridor that was still being repaired after Ren’s extraordinary performance, and the scorch-marks on the wall and floor, the deep gouges carved into the ship, spoke eloquently to him as he passed. 

Having satisfied himself that the Dark Heart was in nominal shape _apart_ from the lightsaber damage, Hux returned to the bridge. The lightsaber damage, and the nagging thrust-vector issues on their number-one engine that were still causing them to burn OMS fuel in compensation. He received the reports of the officers on duty, told the sublight-propulsion engineering lieutenant to alert him at once if any parameters in the engine performance changed, and that he would be meeting with Lord Ren and Captain Phasma to prepare for their report to the Supreme Leader; and then, once his immediate job responsibilities were satisfied, finally set off for Ren’s quarters.

They hadn’t talked, much, the night before. They hadn’t given one another much opportunity. This morning, however, Ren was supposed to be filling Phasma in on the significance of the double crown, and the necessity of keeping the gold half of it absolutely secret. Hux had met with her himself, on his return from Eriadu, to discuss what he and Letitia Tarkin had agreed upon; but Ren was definitely the one to cover the subject of Force-resonant artifacts. 

When he got there, the two halves of the crown were sitting individually wrapped on Ren’s table, and the atmosphere was thick enough to bite. Hux, letting himself in -- he knew Ren knew he was there, and he had lock access to this particular door, in any case -- looked from Ren to Phasma and back again. Phasma’s face was carefully blank, but she somehow still managed to convey the same air as a cat with its ears flat back and the hair standing up along its spine; Ren was...being very Ren, contriving to loom _and_ look inscrutable while draped in a small and uncomfortable chair. It was quite an achievement, Hux thought, even as he wished Ren wouldn’t _do_ that. 

“Good morning,” he said, drily. “I can see we’re off to a brilliant start. The ship checks out: we should be able to make the jump to lightspeed once we’re far enough out of this system, which puts us back at Snoke’s base in approximately two days, so we had better talk fast. Have either of you come up with any useful suggestions?”

“For what?” Ren said. His hand slid across the table to touch the black crown, absently, almost as if he didn’t realize he was doing it. 

“The next Supreme Leader. Or -- I’ve never liked that title. _Emperor_ worked well enough in the past, and it has the virtue of tradition.”

Phasma blinked, and she and Ren exchanged what appeared to Hux to be an honestly puzzled look. “But,” she said. “I -- had been under the impression that was already settled, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well...it’s _you_ , isn’t it?” 

Both of them were looking at Hux now. He stared back. “What? No. I can’t -- I’m a soldier, I don’t know the first thing about running empires --”

“Yes you do,” said Ren. 

“-- I just want things to make _sense_ ,” he said. “I’d be no good at...at standing around and being looked at, and wearing complicated robes and things. You’d be much better at it. I do logistics, not ruling.”

Ren rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to be the Emperor,” he said. “You are. Just think of the galaxy as a very large and complicated starship to shout orders at.”

“I don’t _shout_ orders,” Hux said, stung. “I say them in a clear and precise manner and a carrying tone of voice, because that is my _job_ , unlike politics.”

He could have done without the way Ren and Phasma were looking at one another, as if he were several pages behind in the briefing transcript. “Sir,” she said. “There is ample precedent. I mean -- you studied the same history I did.” 

“I think what she’s too polite to say is _have you forgotten how empires generally change hands,_ ” Ren drawled. “Pull up a chair.”

Hux stared at him, and then at Phasma, and then he did fetch the chair from Ren’s tiny excuse for a desk and joined them at the table. He knew what they meant, of _course_ he knew what they meant, half the famous empires in history had been snatched by conquering war-leaders, there was barely a crown that had not at some point been claimed on the point of a spear, but that was...that was _ago_ , that model didn’t apply to the current situation, but…

_But what if it did_ , Hux thought. _What if it did, I at least...I know how things_ ought _to run. I know how to build, and to organize, and...I can make some of the mass-trans systems run on time, or at least better than they are currently running under Snoke, and a great deal better than the New Republic has ever been able to, and…_

_And this needs to be done right. For thirty years it has not been consistently done right, and what am I actually fighting for, if not the chance to make sure it is_ done right; _who is there left that I can trust, other than myself, to make the decision when to say_ fire? _Whose orders, in fact, am I willing to obey?_

He thought of the rally, of red fire eating up the sky, of the sure and certain knowledge that this power in his hands, this power he had caused to come into being, was _right_. Thought of the deep and terrible and sweet chill that had run through him at the awareness that this machine was capable of doing what he meant it to, forcibly altering the face of the galaxy, _effecting change_ with one blow where before they had had to chip away at it with vastly inferior weaponry. 

Thought of another Starkiller, one that might need to be fired only once, perhaps twice, to put an end to conflict, to bring _order_ and structure and peace where currently chaos and corruption festered. Thought of rebuilding the Empire as it never was but should have been, a well-designed and efficient system of government that did away with wasteful, needless squabbling, to which there could _be_ no Resistance.

“Sir?” Phasma said. Hux shook himself, hard, once, and sat up straight. 

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I’ll do it. I’ll...try, anyway.”

Something flickered across Ren’s face at the words, and Hux sent him a faint investigative ripple. So far they had avoided holding their silent conversations when Phasma was around; Hux felt it was the same kind of discourtesy as chatting in front of somebody in a language they didn’t speak. Now Ren sent _Later_ , and Hux let it drop. 

“Good,” said Ren out loud, and did not roll his eyes again, with visible effort. He was still holding the dark half of the crown. “Now that _that’s_ settled, shall we move on to the question of how it’s to be done?”

They had...not a great deal, to work with. The discovery of the gold half of the crown was about as significant, Hux considered, as the acquisition of the Tarkin fleet, and just as currently useless without a lot of preparation. The biggest problem, along with the supplies and personnel needed to mount any effective force against Snoke, was that at the moment none of them had a clear and accurate picture of where and how Snoke’s assets were currently deployed. 

The intelligence shortfall and the materiel and manpower shortfall were two separate issues, and Hux thought that -- while both seemed insurmountable, at first glance -- it was possible that the Tarkins’ own intelligence network could be brought into play to make diplomatic contact and agreements with other agents around the galaxy and begin gathering supplies. Communications was going to be trickier.

“How are we going to hide that, though,” Phasma said, nodding at the black-wrapped gold crown. “If he can -- sense its presence, I mean. How is he not going to know you have it?”

Ren sighed. “I don’t actually know. Yet. I’ll think of something. I wish we had some dagonium, even dagonium foil would attenuate its Force energy. I will not request that you peel the shielding off the reactor core containment, Hux, you will be glad to know.”

Something was kicking his brain. Yes, they used dagonium alloy in layers to form the outer protective primary core shielding, because it was extremely effective at blocking certain forms of radiation as well as Force energy, and --

Hux grinned. Oh, that was _neat_. That was very, very neat. “Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll keep it safe.”

Ren and Phasma exchanged a look. “How?” she ventured. 

“Because as it happens I do own a secure storage unit that is lined with dagonium alloy,” he said. “Which is widely known to accompany me everywhere. A lot of the older music-storage media are very sensitive to certain kinds of cosmic radiation that can get through ordinary ship shielding, so --”

“Your music box,” Phasma said, with an answering grin. “Of course. Is it -- will it be strong enough to shield this, though?”

“We can test it with Ren. But part of the reason that box is so incredibly heavy for its size is the alloy lining.”

“It’s the best option we have,” said Ren. “I should have thought of that. Take it,” and he lifted his hand from the black crown long enough to push the gold one across to Hux. It was still warm, almost blood-heat, and as Hux took it in his hands he could feel all the little hairs on his arms stand up in a long sweeping wave. 

The urge to put the crown _on_ was unexpected and a little shocking. Ren was watching him, and he made himself look up from the thing in his hands and take a deep breath. “We’re going to do this,” he said, covering the bright gold with its wrappings. “We three are going to do this, because between us we can find both the place to stand and the lever long enough to move the galaxy, and because _it needs to be done_ : it is the...right thing to do. _The situation is suboptimal, and requires adjustment_. I can’t fix things on my own, but _we_ will do this together, and see it through to the end, because _what we start, we finish_.”

~

This time he was not exactly prepared for Snoke’s mental prodding, but at least he knew what to expect, and what worked and did not work in terms of shielding, and everything was less awful when you knew it was coming. 

He stood at attention in the Supreme Leader’s cavernous audience chamber, and underneath the Novotai piano concerto he had running at the top levels of his mind Hux was aware, more than he had ever been, of Snoke as a physical presence. On the holoproj he had been -- vast, several times life-size. Here he was just a man, or a man-shaped thing, _old_ and cunning and twisted but still just a mortal creature. For the first time he found himself wondering exactly where Snoke had _come_ from. What hole in what world he had crawled out of. 

The lashless eyes were watching him, unreadable, dark. Behind his own eyes that pressure shifted, pushing, shoving its way through his head. “Another successful mission,” Snoke said. “I congratulate you, General.”

“Sir,” he said. 

“Your work with Ren has been of surprising quality. I was not initially convinced that you would be able to set your differences aside and work as a team.”

“Sir,” Hux said again, holding on to the Novotai. 

“However. I am assured that Kylo Ren is capable of completing the rest of the work I have for him without your assistance. I need you elsewhere, General.”

Coldness dropped into his stomach, and bloomed there, a sickening flood of it. 

“You were adequately capable of managing a larger construction project, if not of preserving it from harm; let us see if you are capable of greater _efficiency_ on a small one.” Snoke was capable of lining each word with delicate scorn, and he was also capable of laying it on with a trowel: this was somewhere in between. “The destruction of Starkiller Base leaves a significant hole in our defenses, as well as removing a vital communications system node. The repeater arrays that were lost with Starkiller must be replaced. To that end I am directing you to construct a new independent communications relay station in that sector of space.”

Hux stared at him. “A...communications relay station, sir?” he echoed.

Keeping up with what Snoke’s resources were doing, and where they were located, _without Snoke knowing_ , was the aspect of their strategy he had not been able to outline so far: how to gain covert access to the First Order’s communications network. Repeated querying for updates, as himself, would have immediately raised suspicion. What they needed was...to build themselves a _backdoor_. And this deliberate insult of an assignment might just have made that possible.

“That is what I said.” Snoke’s twisted mouth curled further in a nasty smile. “A communications relay station. You should be equal to the challenge of this particular task, General. You will have the materials and manpower you require to accelerate the construction process. I wish the station to be completed within eight months.”

“Eight _months_? -- Yes, Supreme Leader,” he said, catching himself, stuffing _how in the name of every last hell am I supposed to get a full-size repeater station built and running in less than a year_ firmly down into the depths. Forcing himself to look crestfallen at the prospect of the assignment, rather than _excited_. “As you command.”

“You will leave tomorrow,” Snoke said. “Return to the _Dark Heart_ to collect your personal effects and report to the heavy freighter _Atlas_ , which will depart at 0500. You will meet your crew on board. Additional freighters will accompany you to the coordinates of the new station. When you arrive, conduct a situational analysis and review the plans, inform me if you foresee any difficulties in the construction process that would require alteration and re-approval of the blueprints, and begin construction at once.”

“Yes, sir.” Hux forced himself to hold on, to keep the thoughts to himself, keep them secret, keep them safe. After another long awful searching moment, Snoke’s mindtouch withdrew, leaving him bruised and aching, and he kept his face from changing with a miserable effort. 

“That will be all, General. I expect your performance on this assignment to be of the highest standard, as always. Dismissed.”

~

Moving his things from the _Dark Heart_ to the freighter had been surprisingly upsetting: Hux had come to like the ship more than he had realized, judging by how much he was going to miss its familiar battered interior. Mostly he had tried, tried desperately, not to think about the thing that was securely tucked inside his music-box in its black wrapping, the thing that felt like an unexploded bomb. Ren had been unable to sense its presence inside the locked box until he got very close indeed, and Hux was pretty sure that it was safe, but -- still, he had felt this way when carrying very delicate cases of explosive over rough ground, moving with very deliberate care. 

He had done it, though, and the box was safely locked away in his room on board the freighter. It had been a hell of a pleasant surprise to find that Phasma would be accompanying him on this particular punishment detail: the prospect of the work ahead of him was much less daunting in the light of her companionship and her reliable, rock-steady competence. 

“Do you think he knows?” was her first question. Hux didn’t have to ask who she meant. 

“No. Or -- not most of it, anyway. I think he knows that splitting us up is painful, but I don’t think he chose this particular assignment to trap us. It’s alarmingly neat, but it doesn’t _feel_ like he’s on to us. Of course it’s going to be impossible to get the job done in eight months, but…”

But it was _really convenient_ that he should have been tasked with _building a comm relay station_ , Hux didn’t have to say. Of all the difficult, exhausting, inglorious projects he could have been assigned, this one offered him the most remarkably useful conditions. Half of their biggest problem -- full access to the First Order’s communications network and thus up-to-date information on where everyone was and what they were doing -- had just been solved for them, and Hux thought that Snoke was mostly interested in rubbing his nose in the destruction of Starkiller with the assignment to such a basic project, rather than setting up a complicated sting to catch Hux out in rebellious activity. 

“The...item...will be safe there, too,” said Phasma. “Far enough away to make sure.”

Far enough away. From everything. He was trying, trying very hard, not to let himself really think about the fact that he would not see Ren for...a long time. That Ren would be on his own, running around the galaxy after Force artifacts, putting himself in danger without Hux there to -- mostly get in the way, he had to admit, but he still hated the idea of not being able to help. 

“He’ll be all right,” said Phasma, more quietly. “You know he will.”

Hux sagged. His headache was still sloshing around like bilgewater, but it seemed to be lessening, and he wondered how bad Ren would be after his own session with Snoke. “Yes,” he said, after a moment. “I do know. It...doesn’t help.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, briefly, a light kind touch, and Hux was desperately glad she would be coming with him, that he would not have to be completely alone. It was an odd realization: he had spent so much of his life alone that it was his default, base state of being; only just very recently had he found himself _wanting_ the company of anybody else, and now he wanted it like _air_. 

~

Hours later, hours after Ren had come back from Snoke’s audience chamber, in the dark watches of the night, Hux lay beside him and tried to fix Ren’s starfields in his mind, to catalogue every tiny dark spot, its coordinates, where it lay in the constellations marking his body. 

It had been bad, but nothing _like_ as bad as last time, Ren had said: either Snoke hadn’t been peeling him quite so energetically, or he was now somehow more able to bear the peeling, but he had left Snoke’s chambers able to see out of both eyes and walk in a straight line. He had come back to the _Dark Heart_ and slept for an hour or so, and then called Hux on his private frequency and asked why Hux was not there, and as soon as he _did_ appear Ren locked the door behind him and wrapped around Hux like a tall, gangly, black-robed octopus. 

Hux could tell he was still in pain, but this did not seem to diminish the energy with which Ren set about separating Hux from his uniform, and he was far too much of a pragmatist to protest very loudly. Both of them were aware this would be the last opportunity they would have for -- months, an unthinkable span of time, and perhaps that lent an extra intensity, _urgency_ , to them both. At the crest of the bright hot tide of gold this time Hux had to bite Ren’s shoulder to keep from crying out; and he had tears in his eyes afterward, clinging, pressing his face against Ren’s neck as shudders ran through him. 

Now, while Ren slept beside him, Hux wished he could not so clearly tell the minutes that were slipping by; wished he did not have to be so very much aware of the tiny space of time left to them, and focused intently on the star-maps of Ren’s skin to fix them in his memory for the long nights to come. 

_We are here_ , he thought, mostly to himself. _We are here, and we will work together, with what resources we have, with one another; and together we will bring about a change that will alter the face of the galaxy itself. I have witnessed the birth of a new sun, and with you by my side I will hold the countless stars cradled in my hands, and carry them. With you as my strength I will forge something new, and lasting, and right._

_Somehow I will bear this distance, though I do not know how._

He had thought Ren was asleep; but one long-fingered hand came up to cup his face, the thumb stroking gently along his cheekbone. _You think too much._

_I know,_ he said, and leaned into the touch. _I’m...I am going to miss this, so much. Miss you._

_So am I. Running around in inhospitable environments looking for artifacts in temple ruins will not be the same without you._

Hux laughed, a rather watery little sound. _Don’t get eaten by anything. Or -- zapped by lightning. Promise me._

_You have my solemn word,_ Ren said, and drew him down to kiss him. _And_ you _need to promise me that you will not work yourself beyond exhaustion, on Snoke’s project. It is a highly convenient project, but it is not worth burning yourself to the bone._

_I don’t do that,_ said Hux. _I am an excellent administrator and capable of rational and sensible resource management._

It was Ren’s turn to laugh, and Hux kissed him again to make him stop, and then was appalled to find the tears threatening once more. _I don’t...know how to bear not being able to talk to you,_ he admitted. _We can’t do much chatting over the comms, and, well, you’re going to be light-years out of range to talk like this, and…_

_Write to me_ , said Ren, and spread a hand warm on Hux’s back. _Write to me. Letters from exile. He can’t stop you doing that._

Hux thought of all the weight of history that had been carried in message-capsules, over the centuries. _I’m not much of a writer,_ he said. 

_Neither am I. Do it anyway. I want to hear about what you’re doing, about your acts of resource management. I want to hear about Phasma terrifying people, and the awful food, and the thousands of tiny crises you sort out every day. I want to hear about your life, when...when I cannot be in it._

Hux propped his chin on Ren’s chest. _You have to write back, and tell me all about the temples you are robbing and the lists of things you destroy with your stupid lightsaber. And about the ship. I think I’m going to miss this ship._

Ren chuckled, warm and low, and slid his hand up to cup Hux’s neck. _It is a good ship. The lightsaber scarring adds character. I will take care of it for you, as much as is possible. -- What you were saying earlier, about the stars._

_What about it?_

_You’re right. You will catch, and hold, and carry them._ Ren let his fingers drift through Hux’s hair. _You will hold the stars in your hands, and I will help you: I will_ be _your strength, as much as I can be, for as long as you ask._

_I am asking_ , said Hux, slowly. _I am asking for forever._

Ren’s mouth curled in that improbable, illuminating smile. _That’s not so very long at all,_ he said. _But you have me, if you would have me._

_I do_ , he said. _I shall._

Ren sighed, as if some aching danger had suddenly passed, and held him close; and in the circle of his arms Hux let go of the dread and excitement about what was to come, the anticipation of the vastness of the work ahead, and closed his eyes: held, and safe, for now, inside this tiny space, while around them the galaxy wheeled slowly onward in its eternal course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of _this_ fic, but stay tuned: we have a hell of a lot more story that needs to be told.


End file.
